Giving a human touch to Alexa or Siri can backfire
An Indian American researcher-led team has found that giving human touch to chat bots like Apple Siri or Amazon Alexa may actually disappoint users.
Just giving a chat bot human name or adding human-like features to its avatar might not be enough to win over a user if the device fails to maintain a conversational back-and-forth with that person, according to S. Shyam Sundar, Co-director of Media Effects Research Laboratory at Pennsylvania State University.
“People are pleasantly surprised when a chat bot with fewer human cues has higher interactivity,” said Sundar.
