CFP HICSS 59 (2026)-Mini-track on Human-Like Conversational Agents: Chatbots, Digital Humans, and Virtual Influencers

[Yuan, Lingyao [ISBA]]

Call For Papers: HICSS 59 (2026)-Mini-track on Human-Like Conversational Agents: Chatbots, Digital Humans, and Virtual Influencers
For Internet of Work and Play
Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
HICSS-59: Jan 6th to 9th 2026| Maui, Hawaii

Call for Papers
This mini-track explores the transformative role of AI-powered conversational agents (e.g., chatbots and digital humans) in reshaping both professional and personal aspects of daily life. As AI-driven interactions become more prevalent in workplaces, social media, entertainment, and customer service, understanding their impact is crucial. This mini-track delves into key topics such as trust formation, emotional engagement, user adoption, and the ethical implications of integrating human-like AI agents into digital spaces. It also examines how these technologies influence human behavior, decision-making, and social interactions, ultimately redefining the way we communicate, collaborate, and engage within the digital environment in both work and life.
Recent studies underscore key advancements in virtual influencers, emotional interactions with AI avatars, and the implications of digital human realism on credibility and engagement. As AI-powered digital humans become increasingly prevalent in marketing, social media, customer service, and virtual environments, understanding their psychological and behavioral effects is critical. This mini-track aims to explore themes such as consumer trust in AI-driven personas, the persuasive power of digital humans, ethical dilemmas in AI-generated content, and the role of synthetic media in shaping social perceptions. Additionally, we seek to examine the intersection of AI, human identity, and digital embodiment, providing a platform for interdisciplinary discussions on the future of AI-driven social interactions.

We would like to position this mini-track as a place for researchers and practitioners from diverse backgrounds to share their research and ideas. There are a variety of important issues and topics of importance, such as new technology and visual design advancements to human-like conversational agents, the behavioral, emotional, and even physical responses of the users while interacting with human-like conversational agents, the underlying cognitive processes underlying the interactions, the impact of human-like conversational agents on the firm level or industry level, and ethical issues and societal considerations of the application of human-like conversational agents. Research could be wide-ranging, such as rich descriptive statistics, theories, emergent and innovative topics, models and frameworks related to technologies and their impact on marketing, case studies, methods, qualitative research, etc. The topics include but are not limited to:


  *   Exploration of virtual influencers as emerging phenomena (i.e. credibility, virtues, Uncanny Valley)
  *   Use of digital humans in live-streaming, customer service, and chatbots for e-commerce.
  *   AI-powered detection of social behaviors (i.e. loneliness)
  *   The role of realism and machine learning performance in shaping trust
  *   Visualization technology to advance human-like conversational agents
  *   Design factors with creating human-like conversational agents
  *   Design of digital humans by combining human and computer cognitive power
  *   Analysis of machine learning, big data, data mining, and other underlying technologies and algorithms of digital humans
  *   Impact of digital humans on the individual level (decision-making, problem-solving, negotiation, and creativity/innovation)
  *   Psychological and emotional effects of interacting with realistic human-like conversational agents
  *   Biases in interacting with human-like conversational agents
  *   The use of human-like conversational agents beyond individuals and its consequences in organizations
  *   Case studies on industry adoption of human-like conversational agents
  *   Use and economic implications of human-like conversational agents
  *   Social impact and ethics related to human-like conversational agents and their use
  *   Philosophical questions surrounding the idea of 'using' human-like conversational agents


IMPORTANT DATES


  *   April 15: Paper submission begins
  *   June 15: Paper submissions deadline
  *   August 17: Notification of Acceptance/Rejection
  *   September 4: Deadline for authors whose papers are conditionally accepted to submit a revised manuscript
  *   September 22: Deadline for authors to submit final manuscript for publication
  *   October 1: Deadline for at least one author to register for the conference

Conference Website:  http://hicss.hawaii.edu/
Author Guidelines:  http://hicss.hawaii.edu/tracks-and-minitracks/authors/

Mini-track Co-Chairs

Lingyao (Ivy) Yuan
Department of Information System and Business Analytics
Iowa State University
lyuan at iastate.edu<mailto:lyuan at iastate.edu>

Mike Seymour
Discipline of Business Information Systems
The University of Sydney Business School
mike.seymour at sydney.edu.au<mailto:mike.seymour at sydney.edu.au>

A. Benedikt Brendel
Department of Operations and Decision Technologies (ODT)
Virtual Advanced Business Technologies Department (ABT)
Kelley School of Business, Indiana University
Email: alfbrend at iu.edu<mailto:alfbrend at iu.edu>



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