Jan 11, 2026
Manipulation Radar: AI-Powered Detection of Manipulation Patterns in Conversational AI
Barath Srinivasan Basavaraj
A Chrome extension that helps you identify manipulation patterns and reliability issues in AI assistant responses
Why Manipulation Radar?
AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude can sometimes use manipulative language techniques, excessive flattery, emotional appeals, uncited authority claims, and more. Manipulation Radar helps you:
✅ Identify manipulation in real-time as you chat
✅ Assess reliability of AI responses with detailed scores
✅ Improve your prompts to get better, more honest responses
✅ Make informed decisions about when to trust AI advice
Currently your interface requires users to actively seek out an analysis by requesting one. It would be interesting to try using a smaller local model fine-tuned on manipulation detection to automatically try to analyze chat responses locally.
The idea is simple (which is a strength) and effective. However, the idea is not novel (LLM-as-a-judge research, AI control, Multi-agent research...), but, on a quick surf, it seems no one has applied it to manipulation cases as a browser extension: that's great! But it has a core limitation: the detector itself is an LLM, and it is adopted in a straightforward manner, which doesn't address the crucial challenges of AI manipulation (LLM as verifier may be tricked, manipulated, and bypassed by other LLMs).
Cite this work
@misc {
title={
(HckPrj) Manipulation Radar: AI-Powered Detection of Manipulation Patterns in Conversational AI
},
author={
Barath Srinivasan Basavaraj
},
date={
1/11/26
},
organization={Apart Research},
note={Research submission to the research sprint hosted by Apart.},
howpublished={https://apartresearch.com}
}


