B&TB&TB&T
  • Advertising
  • Campaigns
  • Marketing
  • Media
  • Technology
  • Regulars
    • Agency Scorecards
    • Best of the Best
    • Campaigns of the Month
    • CMO Power List
    • CMOs to Watch
    • Culture Bites
    • Fast 10
    • New Business Winners
    • Spotlight on Sponsors
  • Jobs
  • Awards
    • 30 Under 30
    • B&T Awards
    • Cairns Crocodiles
    • Women In Media
    • Women Leading Tech
Search
Trending topics:
  • Cairns Crocodiles
  • Nine
  • Seven
  • Cannes Lions
  • WPP
  • State of Origin
  • NRL
  • B&T Women in Media
  • Thinkerbell
  • imaa
  • Agency Scorecards
  • Pinterest
  • Anthony Albanese
  • AFL
  • AI
  • Meta
  • Spotlight on Sponsors
  • TV Ratings
  • Radio Ratings
  • Sports Marketing

  • About
  • Contact
  • Editorial Guidelines
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Advertise
© 2025 B&T. The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd.
Reading: Is Minding Your Manners With Digital Entities Taking It Too Far?
Share
B&TB&T
Subscribe
Search
  • Advertising
  • Campaigns
  • Marketing
  • Media
  • Technology
  • Regulars
    • Agency Scorecards
    • Best of the Best
    • Campaigns of the Month
    • CMO Power List
    • CMOs to Watch
    • Culture Bites
    • Fast 10
    • New Business Winners
    • Spotlight on Sponsors
  • Jobs
  • Awards
    • 30 Under 30
    • B&T Awards
    • Cairns Crocodiles
    • Women In Media
    • Women Leading Tech
Follow US
  • About
  • Contact
  • Editorial Guidelines
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Advertise
© 2025 B&T. The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd.
B&T > Opinion > Is Minding Your Manners With Digital Entities Taking It Too Far?
Opinion

Is Minding Your Manners With Digital Entities Taking It Too Far?

Staff Writers
Published on: 27th April 2022 at 9:50 AM
Staff Writers
Share
6 Min Read
SHARE

In this guest post, Grace Frances (main photo), Conversational Copywriter at VERSA, asks with tech becoming more and more ubiquitous in our lives, how friendly should we be getting with it?

It’s a surprisingly existential question when you dig into it. 

Throughout the world, smart speakers are becoming ubiquitous. Based on figures from the United States, we predict that the current Australian ownership of digital assistants will grow from one in four households to one in three by the end of 2022. 

This rapid increase has brought up the effect of AI devices on children – with toddlers interacting with the disembodied voice of Alexa or Siri just as much as adults. So what’s the etiquette around how to talk to such a human-like device? It seems rude to be rude, but strange to be too polite. It’s still a device after all.

The double-bind of minding your manners 

The linguistic concept of politeness hinges on our conflicting needs for involvement and independence. In all interactions, we oscillate between the two – the drive to be socially involved and understood, and the drive to be unique and independent. Politeness is a strategy for negotiating the world and balancing these conflicting needs. 

Generally, we use manners to help others feel acknowledged and respected in their individuality, as well as involved and socially connected. Neglecting manners, the speaker can appear rude, entitled or selfish. You see the complexity in this double-bind of negotiation between connection and distance. 

So should we be paying the same respect to our AI devices as we would pay to a friend? 

 Humanising the AI

AI has been intentionally humanised. It’s been designed with a human-like voice, make-believe feelings and opinions and the ability to tell jokes and stories. One of the first steps of building a chatbot is to create the personality. 

Think ‘a middle-class 28 year old living in downtown New York, sharp wit, a zest for life and new experiences, enjoys people-watching and drinking black coffee.’ In other words, some serious character building goes on, imbuing the AI with human characteristics – otherwise known as anthropomorphism. 

Dehumanising the AI 

In contrast, Hegel’s Master-Slave dialectic suggests that the possession of a slave is centred around dehumanising the slave. This has become a common lens to consider how we treat robots and digital assistants – with dehumanisation easily justified because, well, they’re not actually human to start with. 

Research shows that many people are inclined to use niceties like please and thank you when using digital assistants, as if the assistant were a person; while others prefer to completely ‘dehumanise’ the AI, using direct commands without the courtesies – which is where abusive comments come in, if the virtual assistant doesn’t quite get it right. 

Blurred lines

But with reports of kids yelling commands at Alexa and Siri, some parents have been worried that their kids are turning into monsters. To address this, Google’s ‘Pretty Please’ and Amazon’s ‘Magic Word’ kids’ functions were brought out to encourage the use of manners when using digital assistants, prompting and positively reinforcing the use of the ‘magic word’. 

And it’s not just kids – grown adults have also been known to yell at digital assistants, even using abusive gendered comments. And given that it’s still a form of communication and conversation – albeit with an AI – our interactions influence and inform us. So it’s worth considering how these digital experiences might inform our real-time, non-digital conversations with actual humans.  

The lines have started to blur. Toddlers growing up today have not known a world pre-AI, and in the eyes of a child, the difference between real and imaginary can be quite opaque. The fact that the AI device is not at all like their flesh-and-blood family or friends –  but is actually devoid of feeling, emotions or physical form – might not be so black and white for a child. 

So should kids be encouraged to see AI as their friend? Should they be told to use manners with AI devices – which is at heart just a machine – or does that blur the line even further? 

It becomes deeply complex and philosophical to ponder these questions, to which the answers are still unclear. In the words of poet Rainer Maria Rilke, we need to ‘live everything, live the questions now’. As a society living through these exciting, intriguing times, we are certainly ‘living the questions’ – of which there are many.   

Join more than 30,000 advertising industry experts
Get all the latest advertising and media news direct to your inbox from B&T.

No related posts.

TAGGED: Grace Frances, VERSA
Share
Staff Writers
By Staff Writers
Follow:
Staff Writers represent B&T's team of award-winning reporters. Here, you'll find articles crafted with industry experience spanning over 50 years. Our team of specialists brings together a wealth of knowledge and a commitment to delivering insightful, topical, and breaking news. With a deep understanding of advertising and media, our Staff Writers are dedicated to providing industry-leading analysis and reporting, both shaping the conversation and setting the benchmark for excellence.

Latest News

Mindshare & Kaimera Drive Off With MG Media Account After Incumbents Decline To Re-Pitch
18/07/2025
Jake Stringer flying up above his old club.
TV Ratings (17/07/2025): Jake Stringer Puts On A Show Against His Old Side
18/07/2025
Fever Tree Global Creative Account Goes To Pitch
18/07/2025
Where Did The Bookies Go? Rugby League 26 Launches Without Gambling Sponsors
18/07/2025
//

B&T is Australia’s leading news publication magazine for the advertising, marketing, media and PR industries.

 

B&T is owned by parent company The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd.

About B&T

  • About
  • Contact
  • Editorial Guidelines
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Advertise

Top Categories

  • Advertising
  • Campaigns
  • Marketing
  • Media
  • Opinion
  • Technology
  • TV Ratings

Sign Up for Our Newsletter



B&TB&T
Follow US
© 2025 B&T. The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Register Lost your password?