How Human Communication Influences Virtual Personal Assistants

Abstract

Virtual Personal Assistants (VPI) are becoming part of our daily lives. The possibility of voice communication marks a new stage in the development of the interaction between people and computers. New challenges are associated not only with security issues and lack of the VPIs ability to give relevant answers to critical questions but also with the fact that the new artificial interlocutor does not always meet people’s expectations. The article discusses how the answers to the tricky questions of the virtual assistant Alice have been changing from the moment of its creation in 2017 to 2020. It was revealed that Alice not only developed the ability to respond to questions more correctly and avoid problematic topics (including those that could offend a human interlocutor), but also became more “modest” and less gender-oriented. Alice’s small talk and answers to personal questions have changed, thus the VPI hesitates to express her own opinion and make free jokes, begins to make excuses, and promises to improve, which was not observed earlier.