ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE INTERNET.. 2021

Are you talking to me? Exploring customer’s use of Artificially Intelligent Virtual Assistants

ALESSANDRO BIGI - MICHELLE BONERA - THERESA ERIKSSON

Objectives. Conversational artificial intelligence ensures that the experience offered by the chatbot is almost human (Ma and Sun, 2020). The humanization of these tools is a fundamental step for strategic innovation (Go and Sundar, 2019; Castillo et al., 2020) and it is the reason why each chatbot is assigned a name, such as to make it a neutral subject rather than simply identifying it as the product of a machine. In this perspective, the virtual assistant is a chatbot equipped with artificial intelligence capable of answering even unforeseen questions. The present work addresses factors relating to the conversation between humans and a specific type of consumer targeted artificially intelligent machine, the virtual assistant (Garcı́a-Serrano et al., 2004; Saad et al. 2016; Santos et al. 2016). In particular, the article is based on the research question ‘which different factors of human-virtual assistant communication influence the use of artificially intelligent virtual assistants’. Therefore, our study examines different psychological factors that influence the customer’s interactions with artificially intelligent virtual assistants. In order to do so, the study empirically examines the applicability of the Interpersonal Communication Competence perspective to human-artificially intelligent virtual assistant interaction context. This approach builds on Skjuve and Brandzaeg’s (2018) recent proposal that a modified Interpersonal Communication Competence framework may be appropriate to examine human-machine conversations in the human-artificially intelligent agent context, recognizing that the virtual assistants of today also entail artificial intelligence and natural language interactions, with virtual assistants also being “capable of communicating with the user the same way humans communicate with each other-through natural language” (Skjuve and Brandzaeg, 2018, p.113). Originally examining how person-person interpersonal relationships in a communication context are managed (Rubin and Martin, 1994), Interpersonal Communication Competence focuses on the relationship between the fit of the behaviour with situational rules (i.e. appropriateness), behaviour sensitivity, effectiveness and the skills required to achieve a goal in a prosocial manner (Spitzberg, 1983; Spitzberg and Cupach, 1984).

#artificially intelligent virtual assistant #exploratory factor analysis #human-virtual assistant interaction #Interpersonal Communication Competency model