Virtual Assistants as Characters—Or Not

ABSTRACT:New technologies like voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa, and the Google Assistant give the impression that the lines between humans and machines are blurring as machines gradually take up social roles once occupied by humans. To counter that anxiety, this essay argues that these technologies are becoming more like characters, adapting to the templates we initially constructed for fictional beings whose space voice assistants occupy instead. It provides a textual reading of the Japanese voice assistant Hikari Azuma as advertised by the company Vinclu's website in order to demonstrate how Hikari functions as a kyara, a character without story, whose development depends on the user. The essay proposes that we have to adjust our conceptual understanding of characters as distinct from human beings and technology. Instead, the essay concludes that we should perceive current technologies like voice assistants as technologies operating on a spectrum in which some machines will look more like characters and others more like software-in-action with no humanlikeness at all.