2.5 Research question and hypotheses:
Given the cost, scale, and skill-agnostic benefits, and despite the
wariness over an uncanny value risk, or perhaps because the technology
has advanced beyond immediate synthetic recognition, corporate America
readily adopted the high-fidelity results of these avatar programs, with
over half of Fortune 500 companies reporting use of the modern wave of
AI-animation-powered synthetic avatars for their communications, such as
internal learning and development (Bergen, 2023). The potential of this
technology for entrepreneurial use, however, is less clear and is
untested in the literature to-date. While the literature is clear on the
power of a human spokesperson in an entrepreneurial pitch video, whether
a synthetic avatar is a viable option is a question untested and
unanswered in the existing literature. A central question thus guides
this study: What is the comparative effectiveness of synthetic
avatar spokesperson entrepreneurial pitch videos compared to an organic
human spokesperson video?
This study offers the following hypotheses to guide the methodology and
analysis:
- H1: A synthetic avatar pitch will be as persuasively effective a
synonymous organic human spokesperson pitch.
- H2: A synthetic avatar will produce an equivalent brand
impression as a synonymous organic human spokesperson pitch.
- H3: Less than half of viewers will be able to correctly identify
their synthetic avatar as being AI/computer-generated.