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I wonder if the diet soda studies are related to this?
For instance, diet Coke intake is supposed to correlate with very bad health outcomes.
Edit: downvoted for a question in a Science community? Do better, people.
Could it be that people who are already predisposed to getting overweight try to avoid it by diet drinks, but fail because it's genetics and they take more calories on average? Correlation=/=Causation?
Weight gain or loss is just a numbers game of calories in vs calories out. Literally every diet that actually works boils down to a caloric deficit; and those that don't work are because they fail to cross that line.
Any time you substitute something high calorie for low, it's a step toward weight loss. So, artificial sweeteners (at least the zero calorie kinds like sucralose, aspartame, etc; not sure if high calorie sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup are considered "artificial" but it sure as fuck ain't natural) are extremely useful as a weight loss tool.
The study linked could replace artificial sweeteners with almost any weight loss tool and find the same result. "Study links people who sign up for an initial gym membership to increased body fat adipose tissue volume!!" ...like, no shit Sherlock, they're there to lose it.
Be careful not to draw the wrong conclusion from a misleading headline.
But satiety is very complex, and it's possible that sweetener replacements make people hungrier in the long run, leading to weight gain.
IIRC that was a popular opinion about artificial sweeteners for a while because pigs are raised on food with sweeteners, to make them eat more. That doesn't mean sweeteners make you hungrier though, just that pigs like to eat sweet things so they eat more of it.