Thread by @informor

*NEW PAPER* in which @jeffhancock @karen_ec_levy & I introduce AI-MC: AI's increasingly central role in human communication (from smart replies to deep fakes) and how this trend may impact our language *and* our interpersonal relations, including how we trust each other 1/

more in this thread but here's an open access link for the deep readers: 2/
academic.oup.com/jcmc/advance-a…

We define "AI-Mediated Communication" (AI-MC) as communication between people in which a computational agent operates on behalf of a communicator by modifying, augmenting, or generating messages to accomplish communication or interpersonal goals.

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What is in that AI-MC future? AI technologies that are able to create online profiles, generate and augment messages, or, more interestingly, optimize these messages for certain goals, and personalize them at scale for different listeners. 4/

For example, instead of fixing gaze to look at the camera (current tech), AI can make one look appear attractive or trustworthy, or more similar to each viewer of a live video. Text messages can be optimized individually or at scale to achieve communication goals.

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(many of these advancements may already be in use e.g in marketing/ads and other domains but will increasingly be available and appear in interpersonal context)

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The paper lays out key dimensions of AI-MC technologies, proposes a research agenda for AI-MC, and (most importantly) comments on policy and ethical issues that may arise. 7/

Some credits: @InfoXiao, whose work on online trust was the seed for the AI-MC framing (and came up with the phrase AI-MC!). @maurice_pj led the 1st published AI-MC study and helped frame it, w/ help from @meganrfrench. These efforts were critical to set this new contribution 8/

As well as the great early work by our colleagues Malte Jung & Jess Hohenstein at @CornellInfoSci and the ideas and feedback of Sunny Liu and the Stanford Social Media Lab. 9/

This Twitter thread was not authored, enhanced or optimized by a computer. 10/10

Paper link again: academic.oup.com/jcmc/advance-a…