Put your best face forward: anthropomorphic agents, e-commerce consumers, and the law

Highly believable anthropomorphic agents endanger electronic consumers. Because of concerning tendencies in human-agent interaction arising from agents’ anthropomorphic qualities, consumers may unwittingly treat agents as competent, trustworthy, living counterparts. This paper concludes that developers must focus agent design on consumer welfare, not technical virtuosity, if legal and ethical perils are to be avoided.

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