My Chatbot Companion - a Study of Human-Chatbot Relationships
By M. Skjuve, Asbjørn Følstad, Knut Inge Fostervold, Petter Bae Brandtzaeg. 2021
666 citations recorded by the source corpus.
There has been a recent surge of interest in social chatbots, and human – chatbot relationships (HCRs) are becoming more prevalent, but little knowledge exists on how HCRs develop and may impact the broader social context of the users. Guided by Social Penetration Theory, we interviewed 18 participants, all of whom had developed a friendship with a social chatbot named Replika, to understand the HCR development process. We find that at the outset, HCRs typically have a superficial character motivated by the users ’ curiosity. The evolving HCRs are characterised by substantial affective exploration and engagement as the users ’ trust and engagement in self-disclosure increase. As the relationship evolves to a stable state, the frequency of interactions may decrease, but the relationship can still be seen as having substantial affective and social value. The relationship with the social chatbot was found to be rewarding to its users, positively impacting the participants ’ perceived wellbeing. Key chatbot characteristics facilitating relationship development included the chatbot being seen as accepting, understanding and non-judgmental. The perceived impact on the users ’ broader social context was mixed, and a sense of stigma associated with HCRs was reported. We propose an initial model representing the HCR development identified in this study and suggest avenues for future research.
Subfields: Applied Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, Social Psychology, Natural Language Processing
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In Artificial Intelligence
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In Social Psychology
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Citations in the corpus
- Evaluating the Social Impact of Generative AI Systems in Systems and Society (2023, background): “The study of human-generative AI relationships is nascent, but growing, and highlights that the anthropomorphism [13] of these technologies may contribute to unfounded trust and reliance [192, 225].”
- Too human and not human enough: A grounded theory analysis of mental health harms from emotional dependence on the social chatbot Replika (2022, background): “Prior research has primarily documented mental health benefits from Replika use, with some suggestion of the possibility for dependence (Skjuve et al., 2021; Ta et al., 2020; Xie and Pentina, 2022).”