"I Felt Bad After We Ignored Her": Understanding How Interface-Driven Social Prominence Shapes Group Discussions with GenAI

TL;DR

This study explores how interface design influences the social prominence of GenAI in group discussions, affecting communication dynamics and group negotiation, with implications for designing collaborative AI systems.

Contribution

Introduces interface-driven social prominence as a design framework and empirically investigates its impact on group interactions with GenAI in video calls.

Findings

GenAI's presence affects communication patterns

Control over GenAI influences group negotiation

Designing for social prominence can enhance collaboration

Abstract

Recent advancements in the conversational and social capabilities of generative AI (GenAI) have sparked interest in its role as an agent capable of actively participating in human-AI group discussions. Despite this momentum, we don't fully understand how GenAI shapes conversational dynamics or how the interface design impacts its influence on the group. In this paper, we introduce interface-driven social prominence as a design lens for collaborative GenAI systems. We then present a GenAI-based conversational agent that can actively engage in spoken dialogue during video calls and design three distinct collaboration modes that vary the social prominence of the agent by manipulating its presence in the shared space and the degree of control users have over its participation. A mixed-methods within-subjects study, in which 18 dyads engaged in realistic discussions with a GenAI agent, offers empirical insights into how communication patterns and the collective negotiation of GenAI's influence shift based on how it is embedded into the collaborative experience. Based on these findings, we outline design implications for supporting the coordination and critical engagement required in human-AI groups.