Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-2025
ISBN
9798400713941
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
Language
en-US
Abstract
Social robots are a class of emerging smart consumer electronics devices that promise sophisticated experiences featuring emotive capabilities, artificial intelligence, conversational interaction, and more. With unique risk factors like emotional attachment, little is known on how social robots communicate these promises to consumers and whether they adequately deliver upon them within their overall product experiences prior to and during user interaction.
Animated by a consumer protection lens, this paper systematically investigates manufacturer claims made for four commercially available social robots, evaluating these claims against the provided user experience and consumer reviews. We find that social robots vary widely in the manner and extent to which they communicate intelligent features and the supposed benefits of these features, while consumer perspectives similarly include a wide range of perceptions on robot and AI performance, capabilities, and product frustrations. We conclude by discussing social robots’ unique propensities for consumer risk, and consider implications for regulators, developers, and researchers of social robots.
Recommended Citation
Johanna Gunawan, Sarah Elizabeth Gillespie, David Choffnes, Woodrow Hartzog & Christo Wilson,
Promises, Promises: Understanding Claims Made in Social Robot Consumer Experiences
,
2025
CHI '25: Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
(2025).
Available at:
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713471
