IRL Dittos: Embodied Multimodal AI Agent Interactions in Open Spaces
This addresses workplace dynamics for distributed teams, but it is incremental as it builds on existing embodied agent research.
The study tackled the problem of enhancing social interactions for distributed teams by introducing the IRL Ditto, an embodied AI agent representing remote colleagues in office spaces, and found that its effectiveness in strengthening social ties depended on pre-existing relationships with the remote colleague.
We introduce the In Real Life (IRL) Ditto, an AI-driven embodied agent designed to represent remote colleagues in shared office spaces, creating opportunities for real-time exchanges even in their absence. IRL Ditto offers a unique hybrid experience by allowing in-person colleagues to encounter a digital version of their remote teammates, initiating greetings, updates, or small talk as they might in person. Our research question examines: How can the IRL Ditto influence interactions and relationships among colleagues in a shared office space? Through a four-day study, we assessed IRL Ditto's ability to strengthen social ties by simulating presence and enabling meaningful interactions across different levels of social familiarity. We find that enhancing social relationships depended deeply on the foundation of the relationship participants had with the source of the IRL Ditto. This study provides insights into the role of embodied agents in enriching workplace dynamics for distributed teams.