Effect of AI Agent’s Speech and Tactility Types on Users’ Perception

Smart speakers have different speech style depending on the installed artificial intelligence (AI). Furthermore, the AI agent's appearances can make different impressions. Hence, it might give characters to the AI agent through speaking and appearance modalities. To determine how an AI agent's speech and tactility types affect users' perception, we designed a 2(speech types: assistant-like vs. companion-like) × 2(flexibility types: flexible vs. hard) × 2(roughness types: rough vs. smooth) mixed-participant experiment (N=48). As a result, when the speech style is like a companion, it is possible to give an impression of sociability through a flexible material. However, there was no significant difference by flexibility type when being an assistant. In addition, there was a significant interaction effect between speech types and flexibility types on usefulness. When the speech type is companion-like, the AI agent with flexible material was perceived as being more useful and providing better services than that with hard material. On the contrary, when the speech type is assistant-like, the opposite result was revealed. Regardless of the speech type, a flexible material increases the impression of sociability with higher service evaluation, and a rough finish gives the AI agent an impression of usefulness with higher service evaluation.