"I Almost Fell in Love with a Machine": Speaking with Computers Affects Self-disclosure

Listening and speaking are tied to human experiences of closeness and trust. As voice interfaces gain mainstream popularity, we ask: is our relationship with technology that speaks with us fundamentally different from technology we use to read and type? In particular, will we disclose more about ourselves to computers that speak to us and listen to our answer? We examine this question through a controlled experiment where a conversational agent asked participants closeness-generating questions common in social psychology through either text-based or voice-based interfaces. We found that people skipped more invasive questions when reading-typing compared to speaking-listening. Surprisingly, typing in their answers seemed to increased the propensity for self-disclosure. This research has implications for the future design of voice-based conversational agents and deepens concerns of user privacy.