AI-Mediated Dialogue

A paradigm in which a large language model (or similar conversational agent) stands between a user and a task, simulated social situation, or another user — either producing the conversational partner's turns, coaching the user's next turn, or both. AI-mediated dialogue is increasingly used in customer support, peer tutoring, DEI training, and social-skills learning, and offers researchers a controlled 'sandbox' for practicing and studying subtle conversational dynamics such as bias recognition, emotional regulation, and persuasion. Empirical work shows that AI-mediated dialogue can meaningfully shift users' social judgments — but that the framing and direction of AI suggestions are not neutral, and users often actively resist, selectively adopt, or modify the system's prompts.