Opting out of generative AI: a behavioral experiment examining the role of education in Perplexity AI avoidance

• 51 % of participants showed avoidance in an AI-related task, 30.9 % did in an online search task. • Education, along with age, gender, and prior AI experience, were associated with AI avoidance. • The AI-related task was avoided by 74.4 % of individuals with lower education. • Individuals with lower education had lower trust and optimism and perceived fewer advantages from AI, factors also associated with AI avoidance. • Self-selection discrepancies into AI studies may amplify research biases and obscur existing educational digital inequalities. The rise of conversational AI (CAI), powered by large language models, is transforming how individuals access and interact with digital information. However, these tools may inadvertently amplify existing digital inequalities. This study investigates whether differences in formal education are associated with CAI avoidance, i.e., the deliberate refusal or discontinuation of engaging with a CAI when the opportunity and demand arises. We leverage behavioral data from an online experiment (N = 1636) where participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: a control group, a traditional online search task, or a CAI task (Perplexity AI). Task avoidance (operationalized as survey abandonment or providing unrelated responses during task assignment) was significantly higher in the CAI group (51 %) compared to the search (30.9 %) and control (16.8 %) groups, with the highest CAI avoidance among participants with lower education levels (∼74.4 %). Structural equation modeling based on the theoretical framework UTAUT2 and LASSO regressions reveal that education is strongly associated with CAI avoidance, even after accounting for various cognitive and affective predictors of technology adoption. These findings underscore education’s central role in shaping AI adoption and the role of self-selection biases in AI-related research, stressing the need for inclusive design to ensure equitable access to emerging technologies.