Automated dialogue or conversational systems
are anthropomorphized by developers and personified by users. While a degree of anthropomorphism is inevitable, conscious and unconscious design choices can guide users to personify them to varying degrees. Encouraging users to relate to automated systems as if
they were human can lead to transparency and
trust issues, and high risk scenarios caused by
over-reliance on their outputs. As a result, natural language processing researchers have begun to investigate factors that induce personification and develop resources to mitigate such effects. However, these efforts are fragmented, and many aspects of anthropomorphism have yet to be considered. In this paper, we discuss the linguistic factors that contribute to the anthropomorphism of dialogue systems and the
harms that can arise, arguing that it can reinforce stereotypes of gender roles and notions
of acceptable language. We recommend that
future efforts towards developing dialogue systems take particular care in their design, development, release, and description; and attend to the many linguistic cues that can elicit personification by users.