The role of valence, dominance, and pitch in perceptions of artificial intelligence (AI) conversational agents’ voices
There is growing concern that artificial intelligence conversational agents (e.g., Siri, Alexa) reinforce voice-based social stereotypes. Because little is known about social perceptions of conversational agents’ voices, we investigated (1) the dimensions that underpin perceptions of these synthetic...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Nature Publishing Group UK
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9797498/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36577918 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-27124-8 |
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author | Shiramizu, Victor Kenji M. Lee, Anthony J. Altenburg, Daria Feinberg, David R. Jones, Benedict C. |
author_facet | Shiramizu, Victor Kenji M. Lee, Anthony J. Altenburg, Daria Feinberg, David R. Jones, Benedict C. |
author_sort | Shiramizu, Victor Kenji M. |
collection | PubMed |
description | There is growing concern that artificial intelligence conversational agents (e.g., Siri, Alexa) reinforce voice-based social stereotypes. Because little is known about social perceptions of conversational agents’ voices, we investigated (1) the dimensions that underpin perceptions of these synthetic voices and (2) the role that acoustic parameters play in these perceptions. Study 1 (N = 504) found that perceptions of synthetic voices are underpinned by Valence and Dominance components similar to those previously reported for natural human stimuli and that the Dominance component was strongly and negatively related to voice pitch. Study 2 (N = 160) found that experimentally manipulating pitch in synthetic voices directly influenced dominance-related, but not valence-related, perceptions. Collectively, these results suggest that greater consideration of the role that voice pitch plays in dominance-related perceptions when designing conversational agents may be an effective method for controlling stereotypic perceptions of their voices and the downstream consequences of those perceptions. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9797498 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-97974982022-12-30 The role of valence, dominance, and pitch in perceptions of artificial intelligence (AI) conversational agents’ voices Shiramizu, Victor Kenji M. Lee, Anthony J. Altenburg, Daria Feinberg, David R. Jones, Benedict C. Sci Rep Article There is growing concern that artificial intelligence conversational agents (e.g., Siri, Alexa) reinforce voice-based social stereotypes. Because little is known about social perceptions of conversational agents’ voices, we investigated (1) the dimensions that underpin perceptions of these synthetic voices and (2) the role that acoustic parameters play in these perceptions. Study 1 (N = 504) found that perceptions of synthetic voices are underpinned by Valence and Dominance components similar to those previously reported for natural human stimuli and that the Dominance component was strongly and negatively related to voice pitch. Study 2 (N = 160) found that experimentally manipulating pitch in synthetic voices directly influenced dominance-related, but not valence-related, perceptions. Collectively, these results suggest that greater consideration of the role that voice pitch plays in dominance-related perceptions when designing conversational agents may be an effective method for controlling stereotypic perceptions of their voices and the downstream consequences of those perceptions. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-12-28 /pmc/articles/PMC9797498/ /pubmed/36577918 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-27124-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Shiramizu, Victor Kenji M. Lee, Anthony J. Altenburg, Daria Feinberg, David R. Jones, Benedict C. The role of valence, dominance, and pitch in perceptions of artificial intelligence (AI) conversational agents’ voices |
title | The role of valence, dominance, and pitch in perceptions of artificial intelligence (AI) conversational agents’ voices |
title_full | The role of valence, dominance, and pitch in perceptions of artificial intelligence (AI) conversational agents’ voices |
title_fullStr | The role of valence, dominance, and pitch in perceptions of artificial intelligence (AI) conversational agents’ voices |
title_full_unstemmed | The role of valence, dominance, and pitch in perceptions of artificial intelligence (AI) conversational agents’ voices |
title_short | The role of valence, dominance, and pitch in perceptions of artificial intelligence (AI) conversational agents’ voices |
title_sort | role of valence, dominance, and pitch in perceptions of artificial intelligence (ai) conversational agents’ voices |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9797498/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36577918 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-27124-8 |
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