To the rescue of a lost identity: Social perception in human-chatterbot interaction

Imagine a future world where humans and machines will be involved in joint activities requiring social skills. This paper presents an overview of the dawnings of this world, concentrating on chatterbots – computer programs which engage the user in written conversation – and their users. Driving upon Clark’s theory of Language and the psychological theory of self-categorisation by Turner, it presents an analysis of social reactions to chatterbots and a taxonomy of the technology. The basic assumption of the paper is that chatterbots are special entities which offer new ways of being and relating to others. The action of talking to a machine leads to the affordance in the user, and to the projection in the chatterbots, of new social identities. These identities are the drivers of the interaction and fundamental determinants of social presence.