70% of Brits say 'please' or 'thank you' when talking to AI, according to new research reported by TechRadar — and some users go further, apologizing to their chatbots outright.

The study found politeness toward AI is growing, a trend that persists despite broader public opposition to the technology. That tension is the interesting part: skepticism about AI as an industry apparently coexists with instinctive courtesy toward it in one-on-one interactions.

The behavior has practical dimensions beyond etiquette. Habitual politeness shapes how people phrase prompts, and the human tendency to treat conversational systems as social actors — documented since the earliest chatbot studies — appears to be strengthening as the systems become more fluent, not fading as users grow accustomed to them.

Whether that courtesy reflects genuine anthropomorphism or just ingrained conversational habit, the numbers suggest the interface is winning: when software talks like a person, most people can't help treating it like one.