Related papers: Embracing Companion Technologies
AI enabled chat bots have recently been put to use to answer customer service queries, however it is a common feedback of users that bots lack a personal touch and are often unable to understand the real intent of the user's question. To…
Although explainable computational creativity seeks to create and sustain computational models of creativity that foster a collaboratively creative process through explainability, there remains little to no work in supporting designers when…
Two general routes have been followed to develop artificial agents that are sensitive to human values---a top-down approach to encode values into the agents, and a bottom-up approach to learn from human actions, whether from real-world…
Recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and its sub-branch machine learning (ML) promise machines that go beyond the boundaries of automation and behave autonomously. Applications of these machines in creative practices such as…
The growing popularity of AI writing assistants presents exciting opportunities to craft tools that cater to diverse user needs. This study explores how personality shapes preferences for AI writing companions and how personalized designs…
The way we engage with digital spaces and the digital world has undergone rapid changes in recent years, largely due to the emergence of the Metaverse. As technology continues to advance, the demand for sophisticated and immersive…
Artificial agents capable of understanding and aligning with others' intentions are essential for safe and socially robust artificial intelligence. We introduce a computational framework for empathy in active inference agents, grounded in…
Against rising global loneliness, AI companions promise connection, yet accumulating evidence suggests that, for some users and contexts, intensive companion-style use can correlate with increased loneliness and reduced offline…
Recent advances in multi-agentic systems (e.g. AutoGen, OpenAI Swarm) allow users to interact with a group of specialised AI agents rather than a single general-purpose agent. Despite the promise of this new paradigm, the HCI community has…
In the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence (AI) agents, designing the agent's characteristics is crucial for shaping user experience. This workshop aims to establish a research community focused on AI agent persona design for…
The science of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is populated by isolated empirical findings, often tied to specific technologies, designs, and tasks. This paper proposes a formalization of user interaction observations (instead of user…
The Metaverse is poised to be a future platform that redefines what it means to communicate, socialize, and interact with each other. Yet, it is important for us to consider avoiding the pitfalls of social media platforms we use today;…
Multi-modal AI systems will likely become a ubiquitous presence in our everyday lives. A promising approach to making these systems more interactive is to embody them as agents within physical and virtual environments. At present, systems…
The traditional user-centered design process can hardly keep up with the ever faster technical development and increasingly diverse user preferences. As a solution, we propose to augment the tried-and-tested approach of conducting user…
Online(-only) friendships have become increasingly common in daily lives post-COVID despite debates around their mental health benefits and equivalence to ''real'' relationships. Previous research has reflected a need to understand how…
The deployment of capable AI agents raises fresh questions about safety, human-machine relationships and social coordination. We argue for greater engagement by scientists, scholars, engineers and policymakers with the implications of a…
Human agency and autonomy have always been fundamental concepts in HCI. New developments, including ubiquitous AI and the growing integration of technologies into our lives, make these issues ever pressing, as technologies increase their…
Connectivity enabled by technologies such as the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Cloud Computing is rapidly transforming our interactions with the world and with each other. It reshapes social interactions,…
From its inception, AI has had a rather ambivalent relationship with humans -- swinging between their augmentation and replacement. Now, as AI technologies enter our everyday lives at an ever increasing pace, there is a greater need for AI…
As the use of interactive AI systems becomes increasingly prevalent in our daily lives, it is crucial to understand how individuals feel when interacting with such systems. In this work, we investigate the comfort level of individuals when…