Exploring Interactions Between Trust, Anthropomorphism, and Relationship Development in Voice Assistants

Abstract

Modern conversational agents such as Alexa and Google Assistant represent significant progress in speech recognition, natural language processing, and speech synthesis. But as these agents have grown more realistic, concerns have been raised over how their social nature might unconsciously shape our interactions with them. Through a survey of 500 voice assistant users, we explore whether users' relationships with their voice assistants can be quantified using the same metrics as social, interpersonal relationships; as well as if this correlates with how much they trust their devices and the extent to which they anthropomorphise them. Using Knapp's staircase model of human relationships, we find that not only can human-device interactions be modelled in this way, but also that relationship development with voice assistants correlates with increased trust and anthropomorphism.

To appear in the Proceedings of the ACM on Human Computer Interaction (PACMHCI). 16 pages

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Healthcare Voice AI Assistants: Factors Influencing Trust and Intention to Use
• Listening to the Voices: Describing Ethical Caveats of Conversational User Interfaces According to Experts and Frequent Users
• A Mixed-Methods Approach to Understanding User Trust after Voice Assistant Failures
• A Taxonomy of Linguistic Expressions That Contribute To Anthropomorphism of Language Technologies
• Legal Obligation and Ethical Best Practice: Towards Meaningful Verbal Consent for Voice Assistants