Exploring the Dark Side of AI and Its Influence on Consumer Emotion

Abstract

Despite the pervasiveness of Artificial intelligence (AI) and its widespread adoption in the marketplace, its impact on consumer emotions has remained understudied. To fill the gap, our study examines the impact of AI on consumer emotions in the service industry by identifying and mitigating its dark sides. We identified 12 dark side categories using a systematic literature review and probed using a modified total interpretive structural modelling (TISM) approach and MICMAC analysis. Therefore, we follow an exploratory qualitative approach based on in-depth personal interviews with users of short-term technology-based platform Airbnb in the hospitality sector. The findings reveal six significant issues impacting consumer perception and responses toward AI-enabled services, that is, authenticity, affective challenges, deployment problems, ethical dilemmas, discrimination in service, and adoption barriers. Our study advances the ongoing debate around AI and human entrapment. The present investigation contributes to the AI literature with a structured framework for understanding the dark side of AI on consumer emotions and the strategies to reduce those effects. The findings have significant practical implications for the hospitality industry, enabling it to prepare for a human-centric approach to designing and applying AI, ethical concerns with privacy issues, and cultural expectations of the consumer. Finally, we lay out an agenda for exciting AI-dark side-related future research.