Read the full story from North Carolina State University.
When a conversational AI character in an immersive environment says something false, how should the system alert the user? Researchers have now explored this question in a proof-of-concept study, which tested three techniques for alerting users to hallucinated statements from “embodied” AI agents in virtual reality (VR) systems.
While all three techniques improved the ability of users to identify untrue statements, they differed in how users experienced and interpreted the warnings. The findings can inform developers’ decisions about how to help users recognize potentially unreliable statements and improve their experience with embodied AI agents in applications such as educational programs. This is the first study to assess the performance of hallucination awareness cues with regard to embodied conversational agents. Embodied agents are AI-powered conversational agents that have a graphical representation capable of using gestures, facial expressions and speech to enhance computer-human interaction.
See also
Yang, X., Zhan, Y., He, X., Huang, Y., Yu, Y., Wang, Z., Matsuda, N., & Jin, Q. (2026). Signals of AI hallucination: Designing hallucination-aware cues for embodied conversational agents in VR (Version 1). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2609.28812