AI Claims Authority: How Source and Corrective Strategy Shape Perceived Credibility in Combating Misinformation

AI has been increasingly deployed to combat misinformation, yet its credibility remains contested, partly due to overlooking the factor of corrective strategies. This study addresses this gap by conducting a 3 (source: human vs. AI vs. human-AI hybrid) × 2 (corrective strategy: evidence-based vs. authority-based) × 2 (topic: social vs. scientific) mixed-design experiment. Results showed that AI adopting authority-based strategies was associated with decreased credibility, while stronger machine heuristic beliefs and authoritarian personality mitigated this negative effect for AI and hybrid sources. Findings highlight the confounding role of corrective strategies in AI credibility scholarship, offering implications for automated misinformation correction.