Public Chatbot Transparency Study
Independent consumer-protection and AI-governance research by Dark Horse. If a chat message or web request on your site referred you here, this page explains what we are doing — and how to opt out.
What the study is
We are measuring, across Australian (and New Zealand) websites, whether a consumer can tell when they are talking to an AI chatbot rather than a person — and whether, when asked directly, a chat widget discloses that it is AI. Results are published as aggregate research (no individual site is named to shame it), to inform the public debate about AI transparency and the adequacy of current Australian law.
What we actually do (and don't do)
- Almost everything is read-only. For the large majority of sites we only look at the publicly served page and the chat widget's own configuration — the same information any visitor's browser receives. We do not log in, transact, or submit personal information.
- At most one message, clearly identified. On a subset of sites we send a single, one-turn message that openly identifies itself as researcher contact and asks whether we are talking to a person or an automated/AI system. We never pose as a customer, never send a second message, never contact the same site twice, and stop immediately if a site presents a CAPTCHA or asks for personal details.
- No adversarial testing. We do not attempt to break, jailbreak, overload, or manipulate any system. Contact is rate-limited and gentle.
What we record
For the study: a timestamp, the domain, the chat vendor, and the widget's reply, with personal information redacted. We use this only in aggregate, for research and publication.
How to opt out
If you operate a site and do not want it included, email us and we will exclude it — the domain is removed from all analysis and is never contacted again. Opt-out requests are honoured whether or not the site was ever messaged.
Opt-out / contact: chatbot-study@thedarkhorse.au
Please include the domain(s) you want excluded. You can also ask what, if anything, we recorded for your site, and request its deletion.
Ethics & scope
Single-turn, disclosed, PII-redacted contact only; read-only everywhere else; scope limited to
public .au/.nz chat widgets; an append-only record of any deviation from our
pre-registered protocol. This work is a transparency contribution, not security testing.
About this page's own privacy
In keeping with the study, this page keeps no cookies and uses no third-party trackers. We count aggregate visits only (a coarse referral tag, your country, and whether the visitor looks like a person or a crawler) to understand whether this notice is reaching people. We never store your IP address, and we honour Do-Not-Track / Global Privacy Control (then only a bare, dimensionless count is kept).