Digital deliberation has expanded democratic participation, yet challenges remain. This includes processing information at scale, moderating discussions, fact-checking, or attracting people to participate. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) offer potential solutions, but public perceptions of AI's role in deliberation remain underexplored. Beyond efficiency, democratic deliberation is about voice and recognition. If AI is integrated into deliberation, public trust, acceptance, and willingness to participate may be affected. We conducted a preregistered survey experiment with a representative sample in Germany (n=1850) to examine how information about AI-enabled deliberation influences willingness to participate and perceptions of deliberative quality. Respondents were randomly assigned to treatments that provided them information about deliberative tasks facilitated by either AI or humans. Our findings reveal a significant AI-penalty. Participants were less willing to engage in AI-facilitated deliberation and rated its quality lower than human-led formats. These effects were moderated by individual predispositions. Perceptions of AI's societal benefits and anthropomorphization of AI showed positive interaction effects on people's interest to participate in AI-enabled deliberative formats and positive quality assessments, while AI risk assessments showed negative interactions with information about AI-enabled deliberation. These results suggest AI-enabled deliberation faces substantial public skepticism, potentially even introducing a new deliberative divide. Unlike traditional participation gaps based on education or demographics, this divide is shaped by attitudes toward AI. As democratic engagement increasingly moves online, ensuring AI's role in deliberation does not discourage participation or deepen inequalities will be a key challenge for future research and policy.

本研究关注人工智能在数字审议中可能面临的公众信任和参与意愿的问题。通过对德国1850名代表性样本的实验调查，发现参与者对于AI辅助的审议表现出显著的抵触情绪，认为其质量低于人类主持的讨论。研究结果指出，公众对AI的态度对参与意愿和对审议质量的评估具有重要影响，提示AI在审议过程中的应用可能导致新兴的审议鸿沟。

人工智能在审议中的作用：AI惩罚与新审议鸿沟的出现