Artificially intelligent communication technologies (AICTs) that operate autonomously with high degrees of conversational fluency can make communication decisions on behalf of their principal users and communicate with those principals’ audiences on their behalf. In this study, we explore how the involvement of AICTs in communication activities shapes how principals engage in impression management and how their communication partners form impressions of them. Through an inductive, comparative field study of users of two AI scheduling technologies, we uncover three communicative practices through which principals engaged in impression management when AICTs communicate on their behalf: interpretation, diplomacy, and staging politeness. We also uncover three processes through which communication partners formed impressions of principals when communicating with them via AICTs: confirmation, transference, and compartmentalization. We show that communication partners can transfer impressions of AICTs to principals themselves and outline the conditions under which such transference is and is not likely. We discuss the implications of these findings for the study of technological mediation of impression management and formation in the age of artificial intelligence and present propositions to guide future empirical research.

中文翻译：

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人工智能和印象管理：自主对话代理代表一个人交流的后果

人工智能通信技术 (AICT) 以高度流畅的对话自主运行，可以代表其主要用户做出通信决策，并代表他们与这些主要用户的受众进行交流。在这项研究中，我们探讨了 AICT 参与沟通活动如何影响校长如何参与印象管理以及他们的沟通伙伴如何形成对他们的印象。通过对两种人工智能调度技术的用户进行归纳、比较的实地研究，我们发现了三种交流实践，当 AICT 代表他们进行交流时，负责人通过这些交流实践进行印象管理：解释、外交和舞台礼貌。我们还揭示了沟通伙伴在通过 AICT 与委托人沟通时形成委托人印象的三个过程：确认、转移和划分。我们表明，交流合作伙伴可以将 AICT 的印象传递给校长自己，并概述了这种转移的可能性和不可能的条件。我们讨论了这些发现对人工智能时代印象管理和形成的技术中介研究的影响，并提出了指导未来实证研究的命题。