Customer interactions are endlessly evolving, and with that comes the worry of customer trust. This is especially true with the addition of AI-powered voice clones and chatbots, which help with personalizing user experience. While this makes everything easier, it does pose ethical questions.
Chatbots: From Premium Assistants to Marketing Aces
While the website text-based assistants known as chatbots used to be basic, they are now increasingly reliable due to the advancement of AI, particularly with the explosion of ChatGPT and other AI generative programs. People are now using bots for sales, marketing, and service purposes as they can hold more realistic conversations.
Scott Schanke, the UWM Lubar College of Business instructor, is looking at the impact of AI agents on the face-to-face interactions between businesses and customers. He is particularly interested in studying how consumers’ trust, which is the foundation of business interactions, is affected by the different designs and interfaces of chatbots.
The Power of Personality: Humanizing Chatbots
According to Schanke’s research, human-like chatbots, at least to some extent, do boost sales. He undertook a project with a used clothing company to automate the buyback module of their business. He created chatbots of varying anthropomorphism; some avatars told jokes, others used hesitations, and some introduced themselves by name. The research shows those bots with certain human attributes were better at convincing customers to accept offers.
Schanke’s work also highlighted one important concern: the sales anthropomorphism effect changed customer behavior. Customers became less inclined to negotiate with the computer-like bots, even when lower offers were presented. On the other hand, more human-like bots encouraged customers to negotiate better deals. This demonstrates the possibility that the presence of human intent, even in mere bots, drives much of consumer behavior.
Weighing Emotions: Contextual Framing
Schanke is also looking into how chatbots can assist in collecting funds for nonprofits, a project filled with emotional contexts. In one of his upcoming reports, he worked with a social justice organization based in Minneapolis to implement chatbots for donor engagement. His work indicates that while processes may become automated through the use of chatbots and organizational funding may be saved, too much emotional ‘humanization’ in some contexts is counterproductive. “Having high degrees of anthropomorphism as well as high degrees of emotional appeals is counterproductive because it’s too much of an emotional context and it’s almost too abrasive to people.” Schanke goes on to explain. In such situations, a more logical approach brought better results when trying to attract donations.
The Rise of Voice Clones: The Next Step in AI Interaction
The ability to clone human voices, sometimes referred to as audio deepfakes, is yet another fast-paced domain under the banner of AI interaction. These bots accurately reproduce the voices of real people, creating both astonishing opportunities and critical problems.
Schanke’s study that will be published in Management Science regarding the effects of voice clones on trust gets even more interesting. Participants interacted with AI voice clones telephonically in Schanke’s study. It was found that trust levels were greater for the participants where the voice clone played back their own voice. Trust was also observed even in conditions where more information regarding the bot’s untrustworthiness was provided, albeit in the form of warnings.
Manipulation – An Ethical Dilemma Schanke’s Work Brings to Light
The implications of how simple cloning of the human voice can result in doing more harm than good cannot be overstated. Hacking, identity theft, creating fake news content, and other forms of fraud have seen the rise of these technologies being brought into use. The ease with which convincing identities can be created using mere seconds of sound poses a challenge to the distinction between fact and fantasy.
A Foreseeable Reality: How Schanke’s Work Depicts the Future Using AI
Premature AI development paired with advancing technologies such as robotics increases the likelihood of concerns arising, Schanke notes. The matter calls for more focused AI research while simultaneously incorporating ethical implications. For instance, protective measures such as social surveillance laws (monitoring how AI technology is integrated) must be put in place. Other regulations suggested include the prevention of abusive or unrestrained employment of voice clones and other transmission tools driven by AI.
The Impact on Humans in an AI World
Customer interactions are a double-edged sword because of how complex they are. Although AI has the ability to increase effectiveness and personal touches, it also generates problems regarding trust, deception, or the ethical problems concerning the artificial reproduction of human interaction. Schanke’s work shows the importance of research on human-AI interfaces as it can assist business strategies while at the same time protecting the consumers’ interests.
