AI-Enabled Human Memory Manipulation: Misleading AI-Generated Summaries Distort Human Memory

Abstract

AI-generated summaries are increasingly used in high-stakes settings, like policing, despite considerable evidence that AI often generates misleading or inaccurate information. This research asked: do errors in AI-generated summaries distort human memory? To answer this question, we adopted two methodological approaches. First, we conducted an analysis of AI summary output, prompting large language models to generate summaries of videos. This analysis quantified how often AI summaries contain errors and the categories of these errors, revealing the kinds of misleading information that may distort human memory. Second, we conducted a human-subjects experiment to test the impact of misleading information in AI-generated summaries on human memory. Participants were first exposed to an event via watching a video of a car-pedestrian accident, and later read an AI-generated summary describing the video that either contained misleading or accurate information. Participants' memory for the original event was assessed in a memory recognition test. In the AI analysis, we found a high frequency of mistakes in AI summaries, and particularly frequent omissions of critical details. For instance, the majority of summaries omitted the most central event of the video, a critical error which is likely to be impactful. We also observed a strong effect of AI misinformation on human memory. People who read a misleading AI summary were significantly less likely to accurately recall the original event, compared to people who read an accurate AI summary. These findings have implications for how AI should be used in critical settings. Though "humans-in-the-loop" are often expected to correct for AI's mistakes, our work suggests human memory can instead be distorted by these mistakes. AI has the potential to generate misinformation, even absent any adversarial intent, which can meaningfully impact human memory.