درک پذیرش دستیار شخصی هوشمند Understanding adoption of intelligent personal assistants: A parasocial relationship perspective

1. Introduction In the 2010s, the intelligent personal assistant (IPA) space has been growing rapidly. Most global Information and Communications Technology (ICT) companies are competing fiercely with their own IPA, such as Google’s Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Samsung’s Bixby. These assistants are similar in providing a speech interface for performing simple tasks such as making a phone call, sending a text message, and searching for specific information that the user wants to know (Saad et al., 2016). IPAs, which were mainly installed on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs, have recently come into the house with their own hardware devices (e.g., Google Home, Amazon Echo/Tab, SK Telecom Nugu). This phenomenon suggests that IPAs are evolving into home assistants to be used by family members for implementing intelligent homes. Through IPAs, users can not only make a dinner reservation, play their favorite music, or check the weather for tomorrow, but also control their home appliances and ensure the safety of their home and family. If IPAs learn an individual’s schedule and taste based on AI (artificial intelligence) technology, and can proactively provide customized services without user input, fully automated smart homes will be realized. Augusto and Nugent (2006) argued that AI can improve the functionality of smart homes and experiences for residents. Because of the obvious value of IPAs to users, recent market research has forecasted that the worldwide IPA market will grow 32.8% a year from 2016 to 2024, and reach a value of US$7.9 billion (TransparencyMarketResearch, 2016). In addition, Gartner (2016) anticipated that 3.3% of global households will have adopted virtual personal assistant-enabled wireless speakers by 2020, and expected that more than one unit or even one per room can be installed by users’, due to their ease of use and their natural, intuitive model. The advantages and positive prospects of IPAs are derived from the possibility that IPA will be similar to actual human assistants.