Should You Really Say Please And Thank You To AI?

InnovationEnterprise TechShould You Really Say Please And Thank You To AI?ByBernard Marr,Contributor.Follow AuthorJun 08, 2026, 01:31am EDTAs AI becomes more human-like, the bigger question may be how our conversations with machines shape the way we communicate with each other.Adobe StockMillions of people now say please and thank you to AI. That feels natural, especially when the machine on the other end of the conversation writes like a helpful colleague, remembers what we said and responds in a friendly tone.But should we really be polite to software?It sounds like a small question, almost a silly one. Yet it points to something much bigger about our changing relationship with technology. AI chatbots are becoming part of everyday work and life, from writing emails and summarizing meetings to helping with research, planning and decision-making. The more human they sound, the more many of us start treating them like social beings or even friends, rather than tools.A survey by Future found that 70% of people are polite when talking to AI, with many saying it simply feels like the right way to behave. At the same time, critics argue that extra words such as please and thank you consume tokens, computing power and energy, while encouraging us to project feelings and consciousness onto systems that don’t have either.So, do manners make AI more useful? Are they harmless habits carried over from human conversation? Or are we quietly teaching ourselves to treat machines like people while forgetting where the line should be drawn?The Case For Being Polite To AIsThere is some evidence that politeness can improve AI responses. Early research suggested that polite prompts often produced more thoughtful, detailed and balanced answers, while rude or abrupt prompts sometimes led to shorter and less useful responses.MORE FOR YOUThat makes sense when you consider how these systems work. AI models are trained on vast amounts of human language. In human conversation, polite requests...