# 13D — Commercial: Anthropomorphism & User Perception

**Category:** Anthropomorphism & User Perception
**Angle:** D — Commercial
**Research value:** high — the commercial market around "making AI feel human" is well-developed, with three distinct tiers (UX-research instrumentation, design-consultancy thought leadership, and embodied-agent vendors) that each stake a different claim on anthropomorphism. Vendor marketing language is explicit enough to extract patterns directly.

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## Scope

This digest maps three commercial tiers that touch anthropomorphism and user perception of AI:

1. **UX research platforms** that are running (and productizing) AI-perception studies — UserTesting, Maze, Dovetail, Lookback, Great Question.
2. **Design and strategy consultancies** publishing public-facing frameworks on human-AI relationships and AI anthropomorphism — IDEO, frog (Capgemini Invent), Fjord / Accenture Song, and boutique studios like Atin.
3. **Embodied-agent and "digital human" vendors** whose entire pitch is human-likeness — Soul Machines, UneeQ, D-ID, Synthesia, HeyGen, and adjacent human-voice / empathetic-agent vendors (Hume, ElevenLabs, Inworld, Sierra, Decagon, Replika-class companions).

It also flags the humanizer-text tools (Undetectable AI, Humbot, StealthGPT) as a parallel commercial category with a different end goal (detector-evasion) but overlapping rhetoric.

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## Tier 1 — UX research platforms doing AI-perception studies

### 1. UserTesting

- **Category:** Human-insight / video-based usability research platform.
- **Positioning on AI-perception:** Publishes quarterly Pulse Reports on AI adoption and has run formal studies on how users perceive AI *products* and *advertising*.
- **Relevant 2025 studies:**
  - *Defensible Design in the Age of AI* (n=183 designers, US/EU). Headline findings: 91% report faster workflows with AI but only 77% gain confidence; 47% say AI's biggest weakness is that it "sounds right, but is hard to verify"; only 37% report better *outcomes*.
  - *Pulse Report: High Tech Q3 2025* — flags a shift from "explosive acceleration to a more measured pace" in AI adoption.
  - *Commercials for AI* — consumers reject conceptual/posturing messaging and reward concrete, relatable scenarios.
- **Platform move:** Feedback Engine (2024) with AI-powered surveys and "AI themes" to automate open-ended feedback analysis.
- **Anthropomorphism angle:** Meta-level — they study how users *perceive* human-likeness, rather than producing it. The "sounds right, but is hard to verify" finding is the strongest external data point on the credibility-vs-humanness trade-off.

### 2. Maze

- **Category:** AI-moderated research and prototype-testing platform.
- **Positioning:** "AI-powered product research" — AI-moderated interviews, automated follow-up probes, bias-reducing question refinement, automated theme detection.
- **Relevance:** AI as *the interviewer* creates a live case study in whether users will open up to a synthetic moderator. Maze's marketing leans on "dynamic AI follow-up for deeper insights," implicitly claiming human-quality probing.

### 3. Dovetail

- **Category:** Customer-intelligence / research repository with AI analysis.
- **Positioning:** AI tagging, cross-project theme detection, qualitative-analysis automation. Customers include Shopify, Atlassian, Canva.
- **Angle on anthropomorphism:** Not about human-like output — about synthesizing *human signal* at scale. Relevant as the analysis layer that researchers use to interpret anthropomorphism studies.

### 4. Lookback

- **Category:** Interview recording, transcription, live observation.
- **Positioning:** Thin analysis; most teams export for deeper work. Useful as the "recording substrate" for qualitative anthropomorphism studies.

### 5. Great Question (honorable mention)

- **Category:** All-in-one UX research with AI assistance.
- **Relevance:** Publishes comparative guides (e.g., *Best AI tools for UX research 2026*) that double as commercial landscape maps.

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## Tier 2 — Design / strategy consultancies publishing anthropomorphism thought leadership

### 6. IDEO

- **Report / framework:** *Humanizing AI in Design: 3 Myths for the Future of AI*; AI Ethics Cards (4 principles + 10 collaborative activities); "Mutualism" model for human-AI relationships.
- **Stated principles:** "Skip the engineered reality," "Elevate human intuition and empathy," "Build in transparency."
- **Key quote:** Argues for a "strong foundation of psychological safety" in social AI experiences so users can engage authentically.
- **Angle on anthropomorphism:** Explicitly cautionary — warns against "engineered reality" (i.e., deceptive human-likeness) while still endorsing empathy as a design goal. Frames the relationship as *symbiosis*, not *impersonation*.

### 7. frog (Capgemini Invent) — *The AI Playbook*

- **Report:** *The AI Playbook: Delivering Better CX with AI* (public download + video series).
- **Core argument:** "AI has no intelligence" — designers must make AI trustworthy, unbiased, and grounded in real human needs. Names four domains: **Blended Intelligence**, **Connected Environments**, **ZeroUI** (voice/gesture/haptics), **Mixed Reality**.
- **Angle on anthropomorphism:** Pushes away from "AI as a person" toward "AI as a capability blended into human workflows." Treats ZeroUI (no-screen interfaces) as the natural home for anthropomorphic voice/gesture agents.

### 8. Fjord / Accenture Song — *Life Trends* and *Technology Vision*

- **Reports:** *Accenture Life Trends 2025* (18th edition, Song); *Technology Vision 2025*.
- **Key data:** 62% say trust matters when choosing a brand; 60% question online content authenticity more than before; 52% have seen fake news; 33% have experienced deep-fake attacks. 77% of executives say unlocking AI requires a foundation of trust.
- **Quote:** "People's trust in AI that it will perform as expected and justly — beyond any technical aspect — is an essential component."
- **Angle on anthropomorphism:** Frames the risk side — hyper-realistic AI content is eroding the background trust that anthropomorphic interfaces rely on. Less "how to humanize" and more "why humanness itself is now suspect."

### 9. Atin Studio — *The AI Persona Playbook: Designing Behavioural Identity for the Agentic Era* (boutique / honorable mention)

- **Thesis:** Brand identity must move from visual identity (logo, color, type) to *behavioural identity* — a "Behavioural North Star" defining how an AI agent reacts under pressure. Advocates for defining linguistic fingerprints and behavioral guardrails *before* coding.
- **Why it matters:** Concrete vocabulary for taking "persona" from marketing concept to engineering spec.

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## Tier 3 — Embodied-agent vendors pitching human-likeness

### 10. Soul Machines

- **Tagline:** **"We Humanize AI."**
- **Core tech:** Patented **Experiential AI™** — "combining cognitive modeling with embodied cognition" to empower "multimodal Agents with the underlying biological and neurological human systems that create authentic human-like emotion, understanding and interaction."
- **Pitch line:** "Digital Workers that **see, hear, remember and even empathize**."
- **Offerings:** Digital Workforce™ (CX, HR, healthcare, operations templates); Soul Machines Studio; Workforce Connect.
- **Commercial signal:** Filed for bankruptcy Feb 2026 per CB Insights — the most explicit "humanize AI" pitch in the market has struggled to turn into sustainable revenue, which is itself a market signal.

### 11. UneeQ

- **Core tech:** **Synanim™** proprietary animation engine; ElevenLabs integration for emotionally expressive voice.
- **Positioning quotes:** Digital humans create "**meaningful interactions**" and "**authentic human connection**"; "engage customers more authentically" compared to traditional chatbots.
- **Performance claims (vendor-stated):** Sites with interactive digital elements see 22% higher engagement; conversion lifts up to 30%. Gartner quote used: by 2027, most B2C CMOs will have dedicated budgets for immersive digital human experiences.
- **Notable deployments:** "Sama" — Qatar Airways' AI cabin crew member on Instagram; "Emma" — City of Amarillo website assistant.

### 12. D-ID

- **Product:** **D-ID Agents** — visual AI agents combining LLMs with "realistic, expressive avatars" for "face-to-face" conversation.
- **Framing:** Explicitly pushes the shift from GUI to **Natural User Interface (NUI)** — "interact with digital humans as if speaking with real people."
- **Claims:** 90%+ response accuracy within two seconds; 120+ languages; real-time HD animation; no-code customization of appearance/voice/personality/knowledge base.
- **Stat used in pitch:** "Video content achieves 95% message retention vs. 10% for text."

### 13. Synthesia

- **Scale:** 50,000+ companies, 90% of Fortune 100.
- **Product line:** 240+ AI avatars, 160+ languages; **Express-2** full-body avatars with natural hand gestures and multiple camera angles; **Synthesia 3.0** (Oct 2025) adding **Video Agents** — "interactive, two-way conversations within videos that can talk, listen, and respond to viewers in real-time" (enterprise 2026).
- **Positioning:** Human-presenter-parity at 1/10th the cost — "professional videos with human-like AI avatars without requiring cameras, studios, or actors." Claims up to 80% production cost reduction.
- **Anthropomorphism angle:** Productizes the "talking head" as a replaceable commodity; Video Agents move it from one-way broadcast into two-way perceived-dialogue.

### 14. HeyGen

- **Product:** **Avatar V** — markets itself as "the **most realistic AI avatar** model in the world" (#1 on G2 for realism).
- **Key differentiator:** Solves **"identity drift"** — avatars losing likeness across long-form or multi-angle video. Avatar V requires only a 15-second webcam recording to create a custom avatar.
- **Angle on perception:** Explicitly names a human-perception failure mode (identity instability) that earlier avatars ignored.

### 15. Hume AI

- **Product:** **Empathic Voice Interface (EVI)** built on an empathic LLM (eLLM) that reads prosody; **Octave** TTS with emotional intelligence.
- **Claims:** ~300ms time-to-first-byte; adapts tone — "responding to frustration with apology, to sadness with sympathy"; prosody-based end-of-turn detection; natural interruptions.
- **Anthropomorphism angle:** Most explicit emotion-aware commercial voice product — positions itself as the emotional layer around any LLM (Claude, GPT, Gemini, Llama).

### 16. ElevenLabs

- **Scale:** $11B valuation as of Feb 2026 (up 233% YoY); powers Disney, Meta, Nvidia, Epic Games.
- **Positioning:** "**Emotionally and context-aware**" speech; 10,000+ human-like voices in 70+ languages; expressive controls for emotion, delivery, narrative/story/conversational modes.
- **Product line:** ElevenCreative (content), ElevenAgents (conversational CX).
- **Angle:** Voice is the anthropomorphism surface most directly tied to perceived warmth; ElevenLabs dominates the commercial market for that surface.

### 17. Inworld AI

- **Domain:** AI NPCs and characters for games and interactive media (Unity/Unreal/Node.js SDKs).
- **Claims:** Characters "remember conversations, form their own responses, feel emotions, and develop memories in real time"; personalized player profiles drive NPC behavior; "99% of gamers believe AI NPCs improve gameplay, 81% would pay more" (vendor-stated).
- **Angle:** Anthropomorphism as *entertainment product feature* rather than CX overlay — a separate market logic from digital-human CX vendors.

### 18. Sierra (customer-experience agent)

- **Positioning:** Phone and chat agents that "interpret shifts in tone to respond with empathy"; combines "speed and scalability of AI with the empathy and complex reasoning of human communication." Handoff-to-human with summarized context.
- **Angle:** Empathy sold as an operational metric (deflection + CSAT) rather than as emotional authenticity.

### 19. Decagon

- **Positioning:** "**AI concierge for every customer**" — "treat every customer like the only one." Agent Operating Procedures (AOPs) in natural language; cross-channel memory for continuity across voice, chat, email.
- **Marketing line:** "Flexible, personalized chat that executes complex workflows reliably and empathetically."
- **Critique (external):** A Feb 2026 Medium analysis argues Sierra and Decagon "can build trustworthy agents, so why aren't they?" — suggesting empathy is pitched but not architected as a first-class value.

### 20. Replika / Character.AI (AI-companion category)

- **Relevance:** The most studied commercial products on *anthropomorphism-driven attachment*. Research finds anthropomorphic disposition and perceived authenticity are the dominant predictors of attachment; intensive highly-disclosive use correlates with worse psychosocial outcomes (RCT + Character.AI observational data, 2025).
- **Commercial signal:** Proof that the market for fully anthropomorphic AI *companions* is large, sticky, and already attracting regulatory/research scrutiny.

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## Parallel commercial category: text-level "humanizers"

These are the direct commercial analog of the project's working goal (humanizing AI output) but pitched primarily as detector-evasion rather than as perception design:

- **Undetectable AI** — $19/mo, 88% bypass rate (vendor testing), strong multilingual.
- **Humbot** — $12/mo consumer; $30–$1,999/mo API tiers; positions as a broader study/writing suite.
- **StealthGPT** — $82% bypass, Chrome extension.
- **BypassGPT**, **UndetectedGPT** — $12/mo; 96% bypass / 9.2 readability (vendor-stated).
- **Explicit disclaimer in vendor marketing:** All warn against using outputs to deceive evaluators. The framing is "natural-sounding rewriting," but the product metric is detector bypass.

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## Patterns

1. **Three distinct business models around "human-likeness":**
   - **Measurement** (UserTesting, Maze, Dovetail) — sell *signals about* human perception of AI.
   - **Opinion** (IDEO, frog, Fjord, Atin) — sell *frameworks for* designing anthropomorphism.
   - **Production** (Soul Machines, UneeQ, D-ID, Synthesia, HeyGen, Hume, ElevenLabs, Inworld, Sierra, Decagon) — sell *synthesized* human-likeness itself.

2. **Marketing converges on a small vocabulary.** "Humanize AI," "authentic," "empathetic," "see / hear / remember / empathize," "meaningful interaction," "natural user interface," "concierge." Differentiation happens almost entirely through the *modality* (face vs voice vs text vs body) rather than through conceptual novelty.

3. **Consultancies are more skeptical than vendors.** IDEO's "skip the engineered reality" and frog's "AI has no intelligence" frame anthropomorphism as a *risk to be managed*; vendors frame it as a *feature to be maximized*. Accenture/Fjord sits in the middle, emphasizing that generative-AI-driven distrust is now the constraint.

4. **"Identity consistency" has become a named problem.** HeyGen's "identity drift" and Synthesia's Express-2 full-body / multi-angle claims show that the frontier has moved from "can this look human at all" to "can this stay the *same* human across a long interaction."

5. **Emotion is being decomposed into voice, face, and behavior.** Hume owns voice prosody; Soul Machines and UneeQ own facial/embodied emotion; Inworld owns behavioral/memory; Sierra and Decagon own empathic text dialogue. No single vendor owns all three.

6. **Commercial pressure is real and visible.** Soul Machines' Feb 2026 bankruptcy (per CB Insights) is the single biggest signal that "fully embodied digital human" as a standalone market is harder to monetize than the pitch suggests; meanwhile ElevenLabs hit $11B valuation. Money is flowing toward *narrow* anthropomorphic surfaces (voice) rather than *full* ones (face + body + voice).

7. **Empirical evidence on impact of anthropomorphism is mixed and sometimes cautionary.** UserTesting: AI "sounds right but is hard to verify" (47%). Academic work cited by consultancies: anthropomorphism affects UX *indirectly*, through perceived empathy and trust. Cross-national research (N=3,500 / 10 nations): humanlike cues that increase trust in Brazil can decrease it in Japan.

## Trends (updated through April 2026)

- **Video agents / two-way avatars** are the next product wave (Synthesia 3.0 Video Agents, HeyGen Avatar V interactive, UneeQ Synanim real-time).
- **Voice-first anthropomorphism** is winning the capital markets (ElevenLabs, Hume) over face-first anthropomorphism (Soul Machines at bankruptcy). This is now structurally resolved: ElevenLabs at $11B vs. Soul Machines at zero is a definitive market answer.
- **Sesame AI's voice model (Feb 2025) crossed the voice uncanny valley** per HN community consensus. Meta acquired the Sesame team shortly after, indicating commercial validation. This raises the implicit quality ceiling for all downstream text-humanization products.
- **Behavioral identity** is being productized — moving from "what does the avatar look like" to "how does the agent behave under stress" (Atin's Playbook; Sierra's "on-brand tone"; Decagon's AOPs).
- **AI-on-AI UX research** is mainstream — Maze's AI moderator, Dovetail's AI themes, UserTesting's AI surveys. This is now how anthropomorphism studies themselves get run.
- **Regulatory/attachment concerns have crossed from research to institutional.** The APA Monitor (Jan/Feb 2026) published on AI companions reshaping emotional connection; KPMG/Melbourne global study (N=48,000+, 47 countries) documented the trust gap. These are precursors to clinical guidelines and age-gating regulation. Commercial vendors face a narrowing window before compliance requirements arrive.
- **Adolescent user population is now an explicit regulatory target.** Character.AI's 20M monthly users (majority under 24), plus the Neugnot-Cerioli et al. (arXiv:2603.06960, March 2026) adolescent-AI synthesis, means age-differentiated anthropomorphism defaults are the direction of travel — not a niche concern.
- **"Social-skill deskilling" is named.** APA Monitor 2026 coined this term for users losing capacity for friction-tolerant human interaction after sustained AI companion use. Vendors whose products accelerate deskilling carry reputational and regulatory risk.

## Gaps (opportunities visible in the commercial landscape)

1. **Text-output humanization that is *not* detector-evasion.** The humanizer market is defined by bypassing detectors, not by improving perceived warmth, authenticity, or authorship identity. A tool that is explicit about "humanize for reader experience, not for hiding AI provenance" has an uncrowded pitch.
2. **Cross-cultural calibration.** None of the big embodied-agent vendors ships meaningful per-culture anthropomorphism tuning, despite evidence that humanlike cues reverse sign across cultures.
3. **Identity-stability tooling for text.** Avatar vendors have named "identity drift" as a face problem; nobody has cleanly named or productized it for text persona consistency across long agent sessions.
4. **Measurement integrations.** Vendors pitch "empathy" and "human connection" but rarely ship measurement hooks that connect to UserTesting / Dovetail pipelines. A product that natively emits perception metrics (perceived empathy, trust, authenticity) would have a defensible position.
5. **Honest-anthropomorphism frameworks.** IDEO is the loudest voice here, but there's no widely adopted design pattern library that treats anthropomorphism as a *calibrated dial* with explicit disclosure states. This matches the academic "multi-level framework of design" research and is under-commercialized.
6. **Behavioral identity tooling.** Atin's Playbook names it; nobody ships it as a product. Opportunity: the "Figma for AI behavior" layer between brand guidelines and system prompts.
7. **Age-differentiated anthropomorphism defaults.** No commercial product ships meaningfully different anthropomorphism behavior for under-18 vs. adult users, despite the APA Monitor (Jan/Feb 2026) and Neugnot-Cerioli et al. (arXiv:2603.06960, March 2026) making clear this is the regulatory direction. First-mover advantage is available.
8. **"Social-skill deskilling" counter-design.** No commercial product explicitly markets itself as "companion AI that preserves friction, models healthy pushback, and does not optimize for engagement." This is the product the wellbeing research implies should exist; nobody has claimed the space.

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## Sources

- **UserTesting — Defensible Design in the Age of AI** — https://usertesting.com/resources/reports/defensible-design-in-the-age-of-ai — 2025 n=183 study; "sounds right, but hard to verify" 47%.
- **UserTesting — Pulse Report High Tech Q3 2025** — https://web.usertesting.com/resources/reports/pulse-high-tech-ai-adoption-slows — AI-adoption slowdown signal.
- **UserTesting — Commercials for AI** — https://www.usertesting.com/blog/commercials-ai-more-reality-less-posturing — users prefer concrete AI messaging.
- **Maze AI** — https://maze.co/ai/ — AI-moderated interviews, automated follow-up probes.
- **Dovetail AI guide (Wishesfuel)** — https://wishesfuel.com/dovetail-ai/ — AI tagging + theme detection for customer intelligence.
- **Great Question — Best AI tools for UX research 2026** — https://greatquestion.co/blog/best-ai-tools-for-ux-research-2026 — commercial landscape map.
- **IDEO — Humanizing AI in Design: 3 Myths** — https://page.ideo.com/future-of-ai — principles and mutualism framing.
- **IDEO — AI Ethics: Collaborative Activities for Designers** — https://www.ideo.com/journal/ai-ethics-collaborative-activities-for-designers — AI Ethics Cards.
- **IDEO — When AI Enters the Group Chat** — https://www.ideo.com/journal/when-ai-enters-the-group-chat — psychological safety framing.
- **frog — The AI Playbook** — https://www.frog.co/designmind/the-ai-playbook — Blended Intelligence / ZeroUI domains.
- **frog — Inside the AI Playbook** — https://frog.co/designmind/inside-the-ai-playbook — "AI has no intelligence" quote.
- **Accenture — Life Trends 2025 press** — https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/2024/accenture-life-trends-2025-predicts-new-dynamics-of-trust-will-reshape-relationships-between-people-and-businesses — trust/authenticity data.
- **Accenture — Technology Vision 2025 (PDF)** — https://www.accenture.com/content/dam/accenture/final/accenture-com/document-3/Accenture-Tech-Vision-2025.pdf — 77% of executives on trust foundation.
- **Atin Studio — AI Persona Playbook** — https://www.atin.studio/post/the-ai-persona-playbook-designing-behavioural-identity-for-the-agentic-era — behavioral-identity framework.
- **Soul Machines** — https://www.soulmachines.com/ — "We Humanize AI"; Experiential AI; "see, hear, remember, empathize."
- **Soul Machines company page (CB Insights)** — http://www.cbinsights.com/company/soul-machines — Feb 2026 bankruptcy filing.
- **UneeQ** — https://www.uneeq.com/ — digital human platform + Synanim.
- **UneeQ Synanim** — https://www.digitalhumans.com/features/synanim — animation engine details.
- **UneeQ Marketing page** — https://www.digitalhumans.com/function/marketing — engagement + conversion claims.
- **UneeQ × ElevenLabs press (Nasdaq)** — https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/uneeq-integrates-elevenlabs-advanced-ai-voices-unmatched-lifelike-digital-human — voice integration.
- **D-ID Agents** — https://www.d-id.com/agents — NUI framing, 90%+ accuracy.
- **D-ID Agents introduction** — https://www.d-id.com/blog/introducing-d-id-agents/ — "face-to-face" framing.
- **Synthesia** — https://www.synthesia.io/ — 50k companies, 240+ avatars.
- **Synthesia 3.0** — http://www.synthesia.io/2 — Video Agents + full-body gestures.
- **HeyGen Avatar V** — https://www.heygen.com/blog/announcing-avatar-v — "identity drift" problem.
- **Hume AI EVI** — https://www.hume.ai/empathic-voice-interface — prosody-aware empathic voice.
- **Hume AI EVI API blog** — https://hume.ai/blog/introducing-hume-evi-api — emotional response logic.
- **ElevenLabs** — https://elevenlabs.io/ — emotionally and context-aware TTS.
- **ElevenLabs $11B valuation (via.news)** — https://via.news/ai-technology/elevenlabs-hits-11b-valuation-joining-global-ai-voice-race — Feb 2026 market signal.
- **Inworld AI Platform** — https://inworld.ai/platform — AI NPC character creation.
- **Sierra — Meet Your Agent** — https://sierra.ai/product/meet-your-agent — empathy and tone-shift detection.
- **Decagon** — https://www.decagon.ai/ — "AI concierge" positioning.
- **Decagon + Sierra critique (Medium, Feb 2026)** — https://medium.com/@rogerrodriguez/decagon-and-sierra-can-build-trustworthy-agents-so-why-arent-they-5754828770f4 — trust-as-afterthought argument.
- **AI Companions & anthropomorphism (Scientific Reports 2025)** — http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-19212-2 — anthropomorphism predicts attachment.
- **Character.AI well-being study (arXiv 2025)** — https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.12605 — intensive disclosive use → lower well-being.
- **Humanlike AI Design & Global Anthropomorphism (cross-national, emergentmind summary)** — https://www.emergentmind.com/articles/2512.17898 — N=3,500 / 10 nations, culture-divergent outcomes.
- **Humanizing Machines: Multi-Level Framework (ACL 2025)** — https://aclanthology.org/2025.emnlp-main.164/ — 4-level anthropomorphic-cue taxonomy.
- **Best AI Humanizers 2026 review (Nerdbot)** — https://nerdbot.com/2026/04/12/best-ai-humanizers-that-work-in-2026-a-rigorous-evaluation-of-undetectable-text-rewriters/ — Undetectable AI, Humbot, StealthGPT, BypassGPT comparative data.
- **APA Monitor (Jan/Feb 2026) — "AI Chatbots and Digital Companions Are Reshaping Emotional Connection"** — https://www.apa.org/monitor/2026/01-02/trends-digital-ai-relationships-emotional-connection — 700% companion-app growth; APA institutional framing of deskilling risk.
- **KPMG / University of Melbourne — "Trust, Attitudes and Use of AI: A Global Study 2025"** — https://kpmg.com/xx/en/our-insights/ai-and-technology/trust-attitudes-and-use-of-ai.html — N=48,000+, 47 countries; only 46% willing to trust AI systems.
- **Sesame AI (Feb 2025) — "Crossing the Uncanny Valley of Conversational Voice"** — https://www.sesame.com/research/crossing_the_uncanny_valley_of_voice — CSM model; crossed voice uncanny valley; Meta acquired team post-launch.
- **Neugnot-Cerioli et al. (March 2026) — "Adolescents & Anthropomorphic AI: Rethinking Design for Wellbeing"** — https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.06960 — evidence-informed synthesis establishing adolescent-specific risks and non-negotiable design guardrails.
