Real conversations with artificial intelligence: A comparison between human–human online conversations and human–chatbot conversations

• How does communication change when speaking to intelligent agents over humans?
• We compared 100 IM conversations to 100 exchanges with the chatbot Cleverbot.
• People used more, but shorter, messages when communicating with chatbots.
• People also used more restricted vocabulary and greater profanity with chatbots.
• People can easily adapt their language to communicate with intelligent agents.

This study analyzed how communication changes when people communicate with an intelligent agent as opposed to with another human. We compared 100 instant messaging conversations to 100 exchanges with the popular chatbot Cleverbot along seven dimensions: words per message, words per conversation, messages per conversation, word uniqueness, and use of profanity, shorthand, and emoticons. A MANOVA indicated that people communicated with the chatbot for longer durations (but with shorter messages) than they did with another human. Additionally, human–chatbot communication lacked much of the richness of vocabulary found in conversations among people, and exhibited greater profanity. These results suggest that while human language skills transfer easily to human–chatbot communication, there are notable differences in the content and quality of such conversations.