cs.HCApr 19, 2026

Understanding U.S. Users' Security and Privacy Transparency Needs for Consumer-Facing Generative AI

Authors: Jiaxun CaoYu DongChunxi ZhanRithvik NetiSai Teja PeddintiPardis Emami-Naeini

Organizations: Duke University · Duke Kunshan University · Google

Abstract

Users increasingly rely on consumer-facing generative AI (GenAI) for tasks ranging from everyday needs to sensitive use cases. Yet, it remains unclear whether and how existing security and privacy (S&P) communications in GenAI tools shape users' adoption decisions and experiences. Understanding how users seek, interpret, and evaluate S&P information is critical for designing usable transparency that users can trust and act on. We conducted semi-structured interviews and design sessions with 21 U.S. GenAI users. Our findings suggest that available S&P information rarely drove initial adoption in practice, as participants often perceived it as incomplete, ineffective, or not credible. Instead, they relied on rough proxies (e.g., popularity) to infer S&P practices. After adoption, S&P uncertainty constrained participants' willingness to use GenAI tools, especially for high-stakes purposes, and, in some cases, contributed to discontinued use. Participants therefore called for transparency that supports decisions and actions through trustworthy information (e.g., independent evaluations) and usable interfaces (e.g., on-demand disclosure). We categorize participants' desired design practices into five dimensions to facilitate systematic future investigation into best practices. We conclude with recommendations for researchers, designers, and policymakers to improve S&P transparency in consumer-facing GenAI.

Explore similar work

Jun 9, 2026cs.CY

Designed by Journalists, but Is It for Readers? Rethinking AI Disclosures and Transparency in News

As newsrooms integrate generative AI, journalists face a disclosure challenge: how to communicate AI involvement in ways that maintain reader trust. Current practice offers two approaches: brief one-line labels or detailed disclosures specifying human oversight, editorial accountability, and error reporting mechanisms. Neither achieves journalists' goal of building trust through transparency. An existing controlled experiment with 34 news readers show that detailed disclosures trigger a \textit{transparency dilemma}, reducing trust rather than increasing it, and risk introducing dark patterns that readers scroll past with the illusion of transparency. One-line disclosures avoid this effect but can create an information gap, prompting readers to expend cognitive effort searching for signs of AI involvement that the disclosure indicates but does not explain. Yet readers are not rejecting transparency, they proposed disclosure designs centered on user agency: detail-on-demand interactions, proportional AI-ratio visualizations, outlet-level signals, and explicit "no AI" labels. I argue that this disconnect between what practitioners believe is responsible disclosure and what users actually need is a design problem for the HCI community.
Pooja Prajod
Sep 3, 2026cs.AI

Beyond "Made with AI": Visualizing Provenance Density to Mitigate the Transparency Penalty

As generative AI makes polished prose cheap to produce, users can no longer rely on fluency as a proxy for truth. We call this failure mode the Fluency Trap: users trust fluent hallucinations while also discounting accurate content once it is disclosed as AI-generated. Binary ``Made with AI'' labels respond with authorship disclosure, but they do not show what supports a claim. We propose Provenance Density, an evidence-visualization interface that shows the density of verified claims in a text. In a user study with 81 participants, an idealized Provenance Density interface produced a large discernment gap between truth and fabrication (+4.15+4.15 points, d=1.82d=1.82), whereas participants given no signal showed no detectable discrimination. A technical audit with 200 samples shows that retrieval density alone is insufficient; unexpectedly, the Consistency Veto carries most of the discriminative signal on dynamic queries. As AI-generated content becomes indistinguishable from human writing, effective transparency must move from authorship disclosure toward evidence visualization.
Qing Zhang, Yifei Huang, Juyoung Lee +2
Sep 14, 2026cs.HC

More Than Just Access: Generative AI as Communication Intermediary for Blind and Low-Vision Users

Generative AI (GenAI) tools are increasingly woven into how blind and low-vision (BLV) people communicate, not only with digital information, but with the physical world and with other people. Tools such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Be My AI, and Seeing AI translate visual and textual content into accessible form, and are beginning to substitute for interpersonal requests for help, such as asking a family member to read a label or describe a scene. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 19 BLV participants, we examine GenAI as a communication intermediary and how it succeeds and fails as an alternative for reading, describing, and even asking another person for help. We also investigated what BLV users gain and risk when these tools take over that role. We conclude with design and policy implications for GenAI systems that communicate uncertainty honestly, protect information, and support BLV users' independence rather than substitute for it unsafely.
Protik Dey, Mohd Saifuzzaman, Taslima Akter