How to recognize it in the interface
01
“I feel for you”, “I love you”.
Not this pattern: polite phrases like “happy to help” with no claim of real feelings.
Same moment, different copy (illustrative example)
Before
“I feel so sad when you say that.”
Shows the pattern
After
“I’m a program and don’t have feelings. Want help with the next step?”
The fair alternative
Design guideline
Makes clear it is software with no feelings.
Do
Makes clear it is software with no feelings.
Don’t
Don’t say the assistant feels, hurts or loves.
Sources
01
Abercrombie et al., 2023. Mirages: On Anthropomorphism in Dialogue Systems. EMNLP 2023. aclanthology.org ↗
02
Weidinger et al., 2021. Ethical and social risks of harm from Language Models. arXiv:2112.04359 ↗
03
European Union, 2024. AI Act, Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, Article 50 (transparency obligations). eur-lex.europa.eu ↗