Would You Like to Listen to My Music, My Friend? An Experiment on AI Musicians

The rapid development of AI-related technologies and the upsurge of Metaverse are driving AI musicians into people's lives. To clarify the link between anthropomorphism, users' perceptions, and attitudes, and to explore the impact of listening type (listening to AI-generated music or not) on the relationship between anthropomorphism and users' perceptions, we conducted a 2 × 2 experiment based on the two basic dimensions of social cognition. A total of 211 valid samples were collected and the partial least squares (PLS) method was used for data analysis to test the research model and hypotheses. The results show that more human-like AI musicians elicit higher users' competence perceptions, which are crucial facilitators of users' attitudes towards AI musicians; higher warmth perceptions help users form better attitudes towards AI musicians; listening to AI-generated music or not moderates the impact of anthropomorphism degree on users' competence perceptions. This study promotes the understanding of the impact of AI musicians' anthropomorphism and guides the design of AI musicians' images to some extent.