In the 1998 movie Small Soldiers one of the characters is trying to report some toys coming to life and running amok.
He is talking to a human, and not having much luck. “Is there a machine I can talk to?” he asks in desperation.
In 1998 terms, when bots and automated help lines were just taking off, this was funny. In 2024, not so much.
A study by Ohio State University (OSU) has found that, in some circumstances, people would prefer to talk to a chatbot than a human.
This is particularly the case if the conversation is potentially embarrassing.
In one piece of research, participants were asked to imagine buying an antidiarrheal medicine from an online shop.
They were given a choice of being served by a real human, a speech bubble or a cartoon of a human.
“Results showed that participants were more willing to receive information about the embarrassing product from the two chatbots than from the human,” OSU reported.
“But the effect was not as strong for the chatbot with the human cartoon avatar that used more emotional language than the other chatbot.”
OSU doctoral student Jianna Jin said, in general, people still preferred to interact with human customer service agents.
However, this was less so when people were worried about others judging them or they had the potential to be embarrassed.
The research also showed participants were more likely to provide their email address if they thought they were interacting with a chatbot (62 percent) than a human (38 percent).
Ms Jin, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame, said the results suggested companies needed to pay attention to the role of chatbots in their business.
“Managers may not realise the importance of using chatbots when consumers have self-presentation concerns,” she said.
The report can be found on the Ohio State University website.
