Evaluating Socially Responsible Human-AI Interaction: An Investigation of AI Accommodation to Diverse Human Communication Styles

The recent advancements in conversational AI have transformed the mode of human-AI interaction into a more personalized one. The impact of accommodation of various styles of communication on the part of AI on socially responsible human-AI communication has not been investigated yet sufficiently enough. This paper explores the question of how conversational AI accommodates the linguistic, tonal, and emotional style of users. Moreover, the possibility of accommodating the communication style of AI in order to ensure socially responsible human-AI communication is explored as well. Quantitative data were collected via a structured questionnaire completed by 41 graduate and undergraduate students. According to the results, the respondents have rather positive attitudes regarding AI adaptation of vocabulary use, level of formality, tonal style, and emotional response to the user’s communication style. At the same time, the respondents noted the restrictions of style accommodation and pointed out that there are situations in which style matching is inappropriate and could harm socially responsible human-AI communication. From the obtained results, it can be concluded that adaptive AI will facilitate the process of making communication more accessible and inclusive for users of various linguistic levels.