Exploring the Uncanny Valley Theory in the Constructs of a Virtual Assistant Personality

Dr. Masahiro Mori's theory of the Uncanny Valley has been used since the 1970's to portray humans' desire of the amount of humanness vs. machineness that artificial intelligence (AI) should have. However, it has usually referenced AIs such as robots and avatars, but what happens when it comes to current Virtual Assistants (VAs)? And how about when it is regarding a very human characteristic such as VA personality? This study presents an exploration of the Virtual Assistants personality, specially of two of its constructs, words content and voice, in order to identify if the Uncanny Valley theory applies to Virtual Assistants and explicitly to their personality. This research study analyses what users expect of a VA personality in terms of how much it should resemble to a human one. This study concludes by establishing the results of the research activities undertaken which show that users expect that the Virtual Assistant personality should have a balance between human and machine, not leaning towards either extreme, exemplifying the relevance and timeliness of the Uncanny Valley theory.