Artificial intelligence (AI) brings immediate benefits but also raises potential risks. Despite much discussion on AI threat, how subtle linguistic cues, such as first-person pronouns, influence its perception remains unclear. Proposing a scope-expansion perspective, we examine whether “we” versus “I” pronoun use increases perceived AI threat by broadening regulatory scope, particularly when AI threat is psychologically distant. Analyses of two large AI-related text corpora (Studies 1A and 1B) and four experiments (N = 1,451) revealed that using “we” versus “I” pronouns positively predicted and heightened perceived AI threat among English (Studies 1–4) and Chinese (Studies 3 and 5) speakers. This effect, explained by a broader regulatory scope (Studies 3 and 5), was stronger for psychologically distant (vs. close) AI threat (Studies 4 and 5) and among English (vs. Chinese) speakers (Study 3). These findings expand the role of first-person pronouns and enhance our understanding of public perceptions of AI threat.
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