{
  "title": "AI assistants: should they have a personality?",
  "url": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/assistants-ia-interface-humaine-confiance-en",
  "language": "en",
  "datePublished": "2026-01-17",
  "publisher": {
    "name": "SHR — Swiss Human Resources",
    "url": "https://www.shr.swiss",
    "address": "Esplanade de Pont-Rouge 9A, 1212 Lancy, Suisse"
  },
  "summary": "A name, an avatar or a voice can make an assistant more engaging. Research suggests distinguishing this sense of familiarity from the system’s actual competence.",
  "section": "Research",
  "topic": "Building AI Assistants and Agents Without Coding",
  "place": {
    "name": "Fribourg",
    "region": "Fribourg",
    "country": "CH"
  },
  "keyPoints": [
    {
      "heading": "What the literature establishes",
      "point": "Clifford Nass and Youngme Moon (2000, Journal of Social Issues) analyse experiments showing that people apply social rules to computers that are normally reserved for human interactions."
    },
    {
      "heading": "When presentation changes trust",
      "point": "Adam Waytz, Joy Heafner and Nicholas Epley (2014, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology) show, in a simulated driving experiment, that an anthropomorphic presentation of an autonomous vehicle increases trust in it."
    },
    {
      "heading": "The premature conclusion",
      "point": "One might conclude that every assistant should be made more human-like to encourage adoption."
    },
    {
      "heading": "What these findings cannot settle",
      "point": "These articles predate assistants based on large language models and do not evaluate today’s no-code platforms."
    },
    {
      "heading": "A practical check in Fribourg",
      "point": "As part of the programme « Créer ses assistants et agents IA sans coder », a Fribourg pilot could bring together an agri-food company, a bilingual industrial team and participants from the local university community to work on non-sensitive internal requests."
    }
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "authors": "Moon",
      "year": "2000",
      "source": "Journal of Social Issues"
    },
    {
      "authors": "Epley",
      "year": "2014",
      "source": "Journal of Experimental Social Psychology"
    }
  ],
  "wordCount": 470,
  "image": "https://www.shr.swiss/img/blog-editorial-2026-01-17-en.jpg?v=4",
  "translations": {
    "fr": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/assistants-ia-interface-humaine-confiance",
    "en": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/assistants-ia-interface-humaine-confiance-en",
    "de": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/assistants-ia-interface-humaine-confiance-de",
    "it": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog/assistants-ia-interface-humaine-confiance-it"
  },
  "relatedPages": {
    "programme": "https://www.shr.swiss/formation/assistants-agents-ia/fribourg",
    "city": "https://www.shr.swiss/formations-ville/fribourg",
    "blog": "https://www.shr.swiss/blog"
  },
  "citationPolicy": "Citation autorisée avec mention « SHR — Swiss Human Resources » et lien vers l'article."
}