Can an AI persona detect when a human is lying – and should we trust it if it can? Artificial intelligence, or AI, has had many recent advances and continues to evolve in scope and capability. A new Michigan State University–led study is diving deeper into how well AI can understand humans by using it to detect human deception.

In the study, published in the Journal of Communication, researchers from MSU and the University of Oklahoma conducted 12 experiments with over 19,000 AI participants to examine how well AI personas were able to detect deception and truth from human subjects.

“This research aims to understand how well AI can aid in deception detection and simulate human data in social scientific research, as well as caution professionals when using large language models for lie detection,” said David Markowitz, associate professor of communication in the MSU College of Communication Arts and Sciences and lead author of the study.