Researchers Warn Interacting With Customer Service AI Could Cause 'Robotoid Humanness'

Interacting repeatedly with customer service AI could fundamentally alter how people communicate and present themselves, according to a theoretical study published in AI & Society on 19 August 2026.

An international team of researchers from the University of Birmingham, Linnaeus University, and Aarhus University introduced the concept of 'robotoid humanness' to describe an emergent drift where users adapt their behaviour to match machine logic.

The paper theorises that anthropomorphised chatbots, service robots, and digital assistants encourage individuals to smooth out natural human quirks to achieve smoother, algorithm-friendly exchanges.

While the study does not present experimental proof that people are instantly transforming into machines, it highlights a subtle feedback loop operating across everyday digital interactions.

As users internalise machine-driven responses, they may unconsciously favour communication patterns that artificial intelligence can more readily process, recognise, and validate. This emerging theoretical phenomenon raises critical ethical questions about human autonomy, personal identity, and the long-term normalisation of reduced personhood in modern automated economies.

What Researchers Say About Customer Service AI

The news came after researchers introduced 'robotoid humanness', a concept describing a possible shift towards greater compatibility with machine logic. Their argument centres on customer service systems that can adapt to users, personalise interactions and mimic aspects of human communication.

Inci Toral-Manson, a marketing researcher at the University of Birmingham, said social robots are designed to mimic gestures, speech and emotional cues. 'Our research explores how dealing with these anthropomorphised robots can create a bidirectional influence, where robots become more like people, and people become more like robots, which we call "botoid humanness".'

The researchers do not claim that people will suddenly start behaving like machines. Instead, they theorise that repeated interactions could gradually encourage users to smooth out some of the quirks and unpredictability that distinguish human communication. That distinction matters.

The paper does not present experimental evidence demonstrating that customer service AI makes people more 'robot-like'.

Why Customer Service AI Could Change Communication

The researchers argue that AI-mediated exchanges increasingly resemble social encounters. Customer service AI can respond conversationally and, in some cases, personalise its behaviour based on information supplied by users.

Selcen Ozturkcan, a management engineer at Linnaeus University, described the proposed process as a feedback loop. 'The consumer acts, the robot responds, and with repeated exposure, in time the consumer internalises the exchange.'

The researchers propose that users may then begin to mirror communication patterns that elicit effective responses from the system. In human relationships, feedback can be surprising, contradictory or difficult to control. AI feedback, they argue, is shaped instead by algorithms and by what the system can interpret.

If the hypothesis holds, the effect could be subtle. Users might gradually favour forms of communication that are easier for an AI system to understand, potentially narrowing some of the unpredictability that comes naturally with human interaction.

The researchers also link this proposed process to how people construct a sense of self. Their theory suggests that repeated exposure to personalised, algorithm-driven feedback could encourage users to present themselves in ways that a system can process more readily.

'Robotoid Humanness' Remains a Hypothesis

The paper is explicit about its limits. It is a theoretical study rather than an experiment tracking people over time, so the proposed effects have not been established through direct testing. Instead, the researchers develop their framework based on prior research on human-robot interactions.

Ozturkcan said human mirroring could lead people to return a robot's communicative behaviours, potentially making them 'more robot-like'. The paper proposes that this process could influence selfhood as AI systems increasingly mediate everyday interactions.

Jean-Paul de Cros Peronard, a business development scientist at Aarhus University, said understanding these interactions is important as robots and AI become commonplace in customer service, particularly so businesses can use the technology effectively while remaining ethical.

For now, 'robotoid humanness' remains a theoretical proposition rather than a demonstrated psychological effect. The researchers' central question is whether repeated machine-mediated interactions could gradually change the way people communicate and understand themselves.