Corpus study reveals how mental verbs are used with AI and ChatGPT, suggesting varied anthropomorphization of AI.
We studied how writers use anthropomorphizing language to talk about artificial intelligence. Our results presented three major findings: 1) Artificial Intelligence (AI) and ChatGPT paired infrequently with mental verbs; 2) When AI and ChatGPT paired with mental verbs, they were not necessarily anthropomorphized; 3) Anthropomorphization—at least with mental verbs—exists upon a spectrum. Our findings can help technical and professional communication (TPC) practitioners reflect on how they think about AI technologies as tools in their writing process and how they write about AI.
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Aune et al. (2025) studied this question.
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