2.4 The uncanny valley effect

While demonstrating complex computing power, avatars and other synthetic life has been plagued with the challenges of the so-called uncanny valley – the feeling of eeriness and wariness interactants experience when confronting a synthetic being that is humanlike but not quite human (Mori et al., 2012). Negative reactions to the pseudo-human range from biological (MacDorman & Entezari, 2015) to metaphysical (MacDorman, 2005; Tondu, 2015), psychological (Gray & Wegner, 2012) to cultural (MacDorman & Ishiguro, 2006). Whether the uncanny valley effect provokes an anthropocentrism that worries over threats to its distinctiveness (Stein & Ohler, 2017) or a concern for psychopathy and malevolence in the machines (Tinwell et al., 2013), the literature across domains consistently demonstrates interactants’ wariness over synthetic pseudohumans when they are recognized as such. One empirical study, for example, tested film animation styles and found that semirealistic animated films produce higher feelings of eeriness than cartoonish or human films demonstrated that the use of avatars can actually reduce the effectiveness of AI interaction (Kätsyri et al., 2017). Another study found that adding an avatar to chatbot interactions produced higher deleterious uncanny valley sentiments and more intense psychophysiological effects (Ciechanowski et al., 2019). Perhaps most consistent with the aims of this study, and confirming previous research on virtual faces (McDonnell & Breidt, 2010), Weisman and Peña (2021) experimentally found that avatar faces’ evocation of the uncanny valley effect mediates a decrease on affect-based trust, even with somewhat crude faces by comparison even in just the few years’ difference between that study and this present study.
Yet the advancements in AI imaging and animation have advanced considerably since most of the studies investigating the uncanny valley were completed. AI image generators have now evaded detection and won international art contests (Roose, 2022), and a majority of users no longer recognize AI-generated faces when presented to them (Miller et al., 2023). These advancements push back against the conventional anti-AI uncanny valley wisdom and raise new questions for the persuasive potential of the new wave of technology. A sister study, run roughly concurrently with this study presented in this article, tested whether or not the avatars in a program like Synthesia could provide discrete knowledge to users in an onboarding context. While not set in a persuasive context, the results are directly applicable to the project here. In that study, not only did the avatars produce equitable learning outcomes, but over half of the participants did not recognize the AI-generated avatars as being synthetic computer constructs (Redacted Author Citation).