Are Older Adults Ready to Accept Voice Assistants as Artificial Companions? Exploring the Role of Prior Voice Assistant Experience

With the growing ageing population, loneliness has become a significant concern affecting older adults’ emotional and physical wellbeing. Artificial companions such as companion robots have been proposed as a potential solution within Ambient Assisted Living environments, yet they remain limited by cost and deployment constraints. As an alternative, voice-only technologies or voice assistants (VAs) are being suggested because they offer natural interaction and have shown potential to be perceived as companions. However, the extent to which older adults are willing to accept VAs explicitly introduced as companions remains underexplored, particularly in relation to prior experience with such technologies. This study examines how prior VA experience influences older adults’ perceptions of VAs as artificial companions. A survey was conducted with 35 participants aged 60 and above in the UK, capturing data on social interactions, perceptions of companionship, technology relationships, and attitudes toward VAs as companions. Participants were categorised into experienced and inexperienced users based on self-reported familiarity with VA technology. The findings reveal a nuanced picture, with neither group showing outright rejection of VAs as companions. While 91.7% of experienced users had never perceived VAs as companions, they showed greater openness to acceptance under improved design conditions than inexperienced users, who tended to think VAs as replacements for human relationships. Across both groups, companionship was most strongly associated with practical support and responsiveness rather than emotional or human-like attributes. These results suggest that acceptance is shaped less by prior experience alone and more by how VA-based companions are designed, framed, and introduced to older adults.