They believed AI even when it was wrong…51.3% of participants in long-video tasks did not check the original

Participants who watched long videos showed a pronounced tendency to use AI. Researchers at the IT University of Copenhagen conducted more than 8000 video-based information-seeking tasks with about 900 people in the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The productivity of AI-assisted searches increased by 3–35%. Completion times for short videos fell by 10%, while efficiency for long videos increased by 25%.

But the moment AI produced a wrong answer, faster searches turned into fragile judgment. When AI provided misleading information, search accuracy fell by up to 32%. Even so, participants were about as confident in their answers as those who had watched the videos from beginning to end. A plausible-sounding sentence had effectively replaced fact-checking.

The clearest example came from tasks involving long videos. 51.3% of participants submitted AI's false answers without comparing them with the original videos. As the study progressed, viewing of video content declined, while reliance on AI increased by more than 15%. The tendency to rely on AI rather than make an independent judgment was also more pronounced for tasks involving greater amounts of information and complexity.

Verification was even rarer. Only about 1 in 10 participants asked AI a question and then checked the facts by comparing its answer with the video content. Anders Giovanni Møller, a researcher at the IT University of Copenhagen who led the study, said AI assistance could offer potential benefits for search, but excessive reliance made users vulnerable to inaccurate information.

What changes, then, is that search speed and responsibility for judgment become separated. AI made tasks faster with both short and long videos, but it could not replace the final check needed to filter out wrong answers. The “confidence paradox” identified by the IT University of Copenhagen research team shows that the outcome differs depending on whether AI is used as an assistive tool or accepted as the final decision-maker.