Social virtual agents and loneliness: Impact of virtual agent anthropomorphism on users’ feedbacks
Abstract
Conversational agents such as robots or chatbots are today proposed as a solution to modern societys’ issues such as loneliness. This paper explores the effect of the evolution of a conversational agent appearance (Replika©) on user reviews (~ 85 000) through the use of Reinert’s method for text analysis. Results showed differences in the size of thematics issued from the analysis before and after the update such as help with mental health, companionship and visual and conversational anthropomorphism.