Impact of Voice Assistants’ Conversational Style on Cognitive Driver Distraction

The integration of large language models (LLMs) in voice assistants has introduced a new level of naturalness and functionality into human-assistant interactions, also in cars. These enhancements lead to more engaging interactions that carry the potential cost of increasing cognitive driver distraction. This assumption was tested in a simulated driving study, in which 30 participants interacted with an assistant adopting an informal and a formal conversational style. As a result, the informal style tends to be more distracting, especially when discussing personal topics, which provides implications for the design of LLM-based voice assistants in automotive environments.