Artificial Emotions: Exploring Perceptions about the Emotional Capabilities of AI

Large language models such as ChatGPT are being increasingly applied in personal and professional settings to facilitate interpersonal communication. Nevertheless, people’s subjective perceptions about AI usage and its capabilities are not well understood—and these potentially flawed perceptions will determine how and in which settings AI tools are applied. Previous research indicates that, despite its objective capabilities, people may not believe that AI models can be viable tools for emotional expression, viewing emotions as unique to humans. This paper explores how beliefs about AI usage in textual production affects subjective perceptions of the resulting text. In two iterations of a novel experiment, I consistently find that people perceive a text they believe was AI-generated as performing significantly worse in affect-related attributes than the same text when they believe it was human-generated. Subsequently, these biased beliefs influence the improvements and edits people suggest. These findings highlight how people have negatively biased beliefs about AI’s emotional capabilities. This increased understanding of nuanced beliefs involved in human-AI interaction can help inform technology and policy design such that AI is leveraged appropriately and effectively.