Fostering appropriate reliance on GenAI: Lessons learned from early research

In this report, we summarize lessons learned from our work on fostering appropriate reliance on AI. We derived three UX goals for fostering appropriate reliance on AI from the barriers to appropriate reliance observed in multiple studies. These three UX goals inform the Overreliance Risk Identification and Mitigation Framework (opens in new tab), which guides AI builders through the same process we used to tackle overreliance on AI in various products.

Overreliance on AI is a complex phenomenon, which we explained in our previous syntheses of research literature. Existing research makes clear that overreliance mitigations can backfire. Therefore, it is essential to test their effectiveness with user research. In this report, we also share tips for user researchers to identify and assess overreliance on AI and the effectiveness of mitigations

Cite as: Mihaela Vorvoreanu, Samir Passi, Shipi Dhanorkar, Amy Heger, & Kathleen Walker. 2025. Fostering appropriate reliance on GenAI: Lessons learned from early research. Microsoft Technical Report MSR-TR-2025-4. Microsoft Corporation.