Producing shifting personhood: How designers anthropomorphize artificial intelligence

Anthropomorphized artificial intelligence has become increasingly ingrained in the fabric of everyday life, yet sociologists know little about how it is produced. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with 21 voice assistant (VA) designers at major technology companies, we examine how designers of VA devices think about how to design anthropomorphization in order to produce a specific user experience. Extending Erving Goffman's theory of personhood, we find that designers do not always seek to construct devices that convincingly mimic human interaction, even when this is technologically possible in certain ways. Instead, designers selectively build social and personal identities into VA devices as they seek to design devices that are helpful and engaging, broadly appealing, and representative of company values. As a result, devices express what we call shifting personhood , whereby anthropomorphic qualities are conveyed to varying degrees across different moments of interaction.