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

[Lingyao Yuan]

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



Mike Seymour

Discipline of Business Information Systems

The University of Sydney Business School

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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://isworld.org/pipermail/aisworld_isworld.org/attachments/20250313/2f0d8ff6/attachment.htm>