Intelligent agents who wear your face: Users’ reactions to the virtual self

Abstract

The three-dimensional models used to embody intelligent agents are becoming increasingly realistic. We discuss two studies in which we embodied intelligently behaving virtual agents with photographically realistic models of human subjects’ heads and faces. We then immersed those subjects with agents embodied with their virtual selves and compared their interactions and nonverbal behaviors to separate subjects who were immersed with agents embodied with virtual others. Subjects treated agents embodied with their virtual selves fundamentally differently than agents embodied with virtual others in regards to both measured nonverbal behaviors and questionnaire ratings. Implications for systems incorporating realistic embodied agents are discussed.