Impact of voice conversion on communication difficulty and interpersonal attractiveness in non-face-to-face conversation

This study investigated the effects of voice conversion (VC) on communication difficulty and interpersonal attractiveness in real-time conversations through two experiments. Experiment 1 examined the impact of changing the speaker's voice to the extent that it could be recognized as belonging to another person. Participants engaged in a 15-min information exchange game with an assistant whose voice was transformed by VC. Afterward, participants evaluated the communication difficulty with the assistant and the assistant's interpersonal attractiveness. The results showed a significant decrease in instrumental attractiveness, which indicates evaluation as a work colleague. The factors contributing to this decrease were considered to be the unnaturalness of the voice caused by VC and the characteristics of the target speaker's voice. Experiment 2 examined the impact of reduced voice naturalness on interpersonal attractiveness, with the speaker and the VC-target speaker being the same person. While instrumental attractiveness showed a slight upward trend with the use of VC, no significant changes were observed compared to Experiment 1. This suggests that the decrease in instrumental attractiveness observed in Experiment 1 may be due to the influence of voice characteristics rather than the unnaturalness of the voice.