Developing an interactive agent that builds long-term relationships

Abstract

This study aims to establish long-term relationships between dialogue agents and humans. To achieve this, we developed a dialogue system that enables users to feel a sense of rapport based on the rapport-building process observed in human interactions. In the experiment, 30 participants were recruited via crowdsourcing and assigned to one of three conditions: rapport-building process condition, self-disclosure condition, and user-adaptive condition. Each participant interacted with the assigned dialogue system condition for three days. The results suggest that the self-disclosure condition exhibited statistically significant differences in certain aspects. Furthermore, when the system changed topics too frequently or infrequently, the participants’ evaluation of rapport and overall impression of the system declined.