If You Ask Nicely: A Digital Assistant Rebuking Impolite Voice Commands

Michael Bonfert; Maximilian Spliethöver; Roman Arzaroli; Marvin Lange; Martin Hanci; Robert Porzel

doi:10.1145/3242969.3242995

If You Ask Nicely: A Digital Assistant Rebuking Impolite Voice Commands

Michael Bonfert
, Maximilian Spliethöver
, Roman Arzaroli
, Marvin Lange
, Martin Hanci
, Robert Porzel

University of Bremen

Research output: Chapter in book/report/conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Research

Abstract

Digital home assistants have an increasing influence on our everyday lives. The media now reports how children adapt the consequential, imperious language style when talking to real people. As a response to this behavior, we considered a digital assistant rebuking impolite language. We then investigated how adult users react when being rebuked by the AI. In a between-group study (N = 20), the participants were being rejected by our fictional speech assistant “Eliza” when they made impolite requests. As a result, we observed more polite behavior. Most test subjects accepted the AI's demand and said “please” significantly more often. However, many participants retrospectively denied Eliza the entitlement to politeness and criticized her attitude or refusal of service.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Pages	95-102
Number of pages	8
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450356923
ISBN (Print)	9781450356923
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3242969.3242995
Publication status	Published - 2 Oct 2018
Externally published	Yes
Event	20th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction - Boulder, United States Duration: 16 Oct 2018 → 20 Oct 2018

Conference

Conference	20th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction
Abbreviated title	ICMI 18
Country/Territory	United States
City	Boulder
Period	16 Oct 2018 → 20 Oct 2018

Keywords

Computers are social actors
Politeness
Social psychology
Speech assistant
Voice interface

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Human-Computer Interaction
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Hardware and Architecture
Computer Science Applications

Access to Document

10.1145/3242969.3242995

Cite this

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title = "If You Ask Nicely: A Digital Assistant Rebuking Impolite Voice Commands",

abstract = "Digital home assistants have an increasing influence on our everyday lives. The media now reports how children adapt the consequential, imperious language style when talking to real people. As a response to this behavior, we considered a digital assistant rebuking impolite language. We then investigated how adult users react when being rebuked by the AI. In a between-group study (N = 20), the participants were being rejected by our fictional speech assistant “Eliza” when they made impolite requests. As a result, we observed more polite behavior. Most test subjects accepted the AI's demand and said “please” significantly more often. However, many participants retrospectively denied Eliza the entitlement to politeness and criticized her attitude or refusal of service.",

keywords = "Computers are social actors, Politeness, Social psychology, Speech assistant, Voice interface",

author = "Michael Bonfert and Maximilian Splieth{\"o}ver and Roman Arzaroli and Marvin Lange and Martin Hanci and Robert Porzel",

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day = "2",

doi = "10.1145/3242969.3242995",

language = "English",

isbn = "9781450356923",

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Bonfert, M, Spliethöver, M, Arzaroli, R, Lange, M, Hanci, M & Porzel, R 2018, If You Ask Nicely: A Digital Assistant Rebuking Impolite Voice Commands. in Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), pp. 95-102, 20th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, Boulder, Colorado, United States, 16 Oct 2018. https://doi.org/10.1145/3242969.3242995

If You Ask Nicely: A Digital Assistant Rebuking Impolite Voice Commands. / Bonfert, Michael; Spliethöver, Maximilian; Arzaroli, Roman et al.
Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2018. p. 95-102.

Research output: Chapter in book/report/conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Research

TY - GEN

T1 - If You Ask Nicely

T2 - 20th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction

AU - Bonfert, Michael

AU - Spliethöver, Maximilian

AU - Arzaroli, Roman

AU - Lange, Marvin

AU - Hanci, Martin

AU - Porzel, Robert

PY - 2018/10/2

Y1 - 2018/10/2

N2 - Digital home assistants have an increasing influence on our everyday lives. The media now reports how children adapt the consequential, imperious language style when talking to real people. As a response to this behavior, we considered a digital assistant rebuking impolite language. We then investigated how adult users react when being rebuked by the AI. In a between-group study (N = 20), the participants were being rejected by our fictional speech assistant “Eliza” when they made impolite requests. As a result, we observed more polite behavior. Most test subjects accepted the AI's demand and said “please” significantly more often. However, many participants retrospectively denied Eliza the entitlement to politeness and criticized her attitude or refusal of service.

AB - Digital home assistants have an increasing influence on our everyday lives. The media now reports how children adapt the consequential, imperious language style when talking to real people. As a response to this behavior, we considered a digital assistant rebuking impolite language. We then investigated how adult users react when being rebuked by the AI. In a between-group study (N = 20), the participants were being rejected by our fictional speech assistant “Eliza” when they made impolite requests. As a result, we observed more polite behavior. Most test subjects accepted the AI's demand and said “please” significantly more often. However, many participants retrospectively denied Eliza the entitlement to politeness and criticized her attitude or refusal of service.

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KW - Social psychology

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ER -

If You Ask Nicely: A Digital Assistant Rebuking Impolite Voice Commands

Abstract

Conference

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

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