SIGNATURE WORK
CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 2022

This paper analyzes the emergence of commercialized artificial intelligence (AI) assistant products and reassess the notion of the body, algorithmic culture, and human-technology relationship in the digital age. The 21st century has witnessed an expanding interest in AI assistants from fictional characters to industrial products. As the algorithm tends to humanize itself with “personality” or even a physical “body”, the discussion of embodied AI requires immediate attention for moral and ethical considerations. By tracing the genealogy of AI together with specific cultural and technological milestones such as Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa (2013) and Hanson Robotics’ humanoid Sophia (2016), this study questions the socio-economic paradigms of AI, critiques the advertising campaigns by technology companies that seem to promote their products as being in some sense human, and further examines ethical dimensions of having such AI products in the personal realm such as the home or even the bedroom.