An approach to analyze the social acceptance of virtual assistants by elderly people

Abstract

Interactive virtual assistants serve as a cost-effective solution to assist elderly people in several ways. They act as means to provide social support, manage loneliness, medium of communication, reminder systems and even instill positive moods in their users. The relevance of advancement in virtual assistant technology is not only confined to advancement in functionalities in virtual assistants but it also involves analyzing levels of social acceptance of these virtual assistants that feature on different kinds of interactive devices. This analysis would help to set up paradigms of trust and belief in human-technology partnerships and serve as means to enhance the utilization of virtual assistants through increasing their social acceptance, typically by elderly people. To analyze the social acceptance of virtual assistants on different interactive devices, this work uses the concept of sentiment analysis using Natural Language Processing to analyze the views, expressions and beliefs expressed by elderly people while interacting with virtual assistants on different devices.