Machine Communicative Responsibility Perception: Functional and Emotional Communicative Responsibility of AI Advisors and AI Partners

As AI agents such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Little Ice begin to demonstrate human-like communication capabilities, they can be seen to respond to people reliably, accurately, and effectively and exhibit similar characteristics to humans in fulfilling their communication responsibilities; accordingly, machine communicative responsibility perception (MCRP) has been developed. Based on mind perception theory, this article explores the intrinsic mechanism underlying MCRP and its implications. MCRP is divided into two categories, i.e., perceived functional communicative responsibility and perceived emotional communicative responsibility, and the MCRP model is validated through the roles of AI advisor and AI partner being played by AI agents. The results show that the perceived functional and emotional communicative responsibility of AI agents significantly and positively influences people’s intention to interact with them on an ongoing basis; however, this effect varies across AI roles. For AI advisors, functional communicative responsibility perceptions have a greater impact, whereas for AI partners, emotional communicative responsibility perceptions are more important.