Abstract
The present study aims to explore user’ acceptance and perceptions toward different quality levels of synthetical voices. To achieve this, four voices have been exploited considering two main factors: the quality of the voices (low vs high) and their gender (male and female). 186 volunteers were recruited and subsequently allocated into four groups of different ages respectively, adolescents, young adults, middle-aged and seniors. After having randomly listened to each voice, participants were asked to fill the Virtual Agent Voice Acceptance Questionnaire (VAVAQ). Outcomes show that the two higher quality voices of Antonio and Giulia were more appreciated than the low-quality voices of Edoardo and Clara by the whole sample in terms of pragmatic, hedonic and attractiveness qualities attributed to the voices. Concerning preferences towards differently aged voices, it clearly appeared that they varied according to participants age’ ranges examined. Furthermore, in terms of suitability to perform different tasks, participants considered Antonio and Giulia equally adapt for healthcare and front office jobs. Antonio was also judged to be significantly more qualified to accomplish protection and security tasks, while Edoardo was classified as the absolute least skilled in conducting household chores.
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Data Availability
Further information on the proposed method and dataset analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author (marialucia.cuciniello@unicampania.it) on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgments
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement N. 769872 (EMPATHIC) and N. 823907 (MENHIR), from the project SIROBOTICS that received funding from Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell ‘Università, e della Ricerca (MIUR), PNR 2015–2020, Decreto Direttoriale 1735 July 13 2017, and from the project ANDROIDS that received funding from Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” inside the programme V:ALERE 2019, funded with D.R. 906 del 4/10/2019, prot. n. 157264, October 17, 2019.
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Cuciniello, M. et al. (2022). Identifying Synthetic Voices’ Qualities for Conversational Agents. In: Mahmud, M., Ieracitano, C., Kaiser, M.S., Mammone, N., Morabito, F.C. (eds) Applied Intelligence and Informatics. AII 2022. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1724. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24801-6_24
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