Chatbots may be making conversation more robotic: a new study warns

A recent paper on chatbots makes a simple point that’s hard to shake: the more human chatbots sound, the more people may start reshaping their own language around them.

The paper gives that shift a name, “robotoid humanness.” It describes a two-way process where automated systems get better at sounding human, while people slide the other way and start sounding more machine-like in their pacing, prompts, and overall interaction style. You can already see the pattern most clearly in customer service, where chat assistants tend to reward concise, structured messages that are concise, structured, and purely transactional.

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One Harvard Business School study found that automated help let agents respond 22% faster and pushed customer sentiment up by 0.45 points on a five-point scale. But there’s a catch. Replies that are too fast and too polished can chip away at trust and satisfaction once people start thinking they’re talking to a bot, which creates an uncanny effect for companies trying to automate support.

The paper’s bigger concern is what happens over time. Heavy chatbot use could feed social deskilling, weaken critical-thinking habits, erode language, and even encourage emotional dependency. It also admits the evidence is still narrow: most of the research comes from Western, English-speaking settings, with much less data on how culture, class, language, and life in developing or rural areas might change the picture.

If you use chat support a lot, this is one to keep an eye on as chatbots become the default layer between people and businesses.

Author: Anthony John Padilla

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