{"id":59219,"date":"2026-10-12T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mashup-communications.de\/2023\/10\/making-ai-approachable-with-emotional-storytelling\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T17:24:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T15:24:47","slug":"storytelling-ki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mashup-communications.de\/en\/2026\/10\/storytelling-ki\/","title":{"rendered":"Making AI Easy to Understand: How Storytelling Builds Trust"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Source: Pixabay<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

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V.I.K.I. from I, Robot,<\/em> GLaDOS from Portal<\/em> or HAL from Odyssey in Space<\/em>: evil robots that develop their own will and turn against their creators have been an integral part of stories over the past decades. At the same time, artificial intelligence has become an integral part of our everyday lives in recent years. We unlock our smartphones using facial recognition, let Netflix suggest movies and ask Google Maps for directions. <\/p>\n\n

Skepticism arose when AI suddenly began to speak: The release of digital voice assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa<\/em> or Apple’s Siri<\/em>, as well as the chatbot ChatGPT<\/em> from the company OpenAI, was accompanied by critical voices. For some, the whole thing reminded them a little too much of the robots from books, films and video games. <\/p>\n\n

How can storytelling make artificial intelligence easier to understand?<\/h2>\n\n

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Storytelling can reduce skepticism, but trust is also built through experience, transparency, and genuine reliability. Storytelling helps companies communicate complex AI technologies in a way that is understandable and relatable. Rather than explaining technical features alone, stories show how artificial intelligence supports people in their daily lives, what problems it can solve, and where its limitations lie. Examples like Siri and ChatGPT illustrate how concrete use cases and clear explanations can alleviate reservations and foster trust. <\/p>\n\n

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What starts with a story ends with a story: The beginnings of AI horror stories<\/h2>\n\n

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To understand how companies like Apple and Amazon have been able to allay people’s fears of AI through storytelling, we first need to understand where our reservations about it come from in the first place. The fascination with man-made consciousness is by no means anything new. What was ended by stories also began by stories: Artificially created life has been a recurring horror element at least since Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein<\/em>. In German-speaking countries, artificial intelligence even appeared as early as 1816 in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story The Sandman<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n

Stories therefore shape not only how we imagine artificial intelligence, but also the expectations and fears we associate with it. For companies, this means that if you want to communicate about AI in a way that\u2019s easy to understand, you also have to address the images people already have in their minds. <\/p>\n\n

We explain how texting works with artificial intelligence here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

ELIZA’s Awakening: The First Artificial Intelligence?<\/h2>\n\n

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Source: Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

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It would take until 1966 for the first “real” artificial intelligence to see the light of day: ELIZA<\/em> was the name of the chatbot programmed by computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum, which was supposed to be modeled on a psychotherapist. She came up with the so-called ELIZA effect: participants in the study in which ELIZA<\/em> was tested treated her like a human conversation partner. Many of them found it difficult to acknowledge that ELIZA<\/em> has no consciousness – some completely refused to accept this fact. <\/p>\n\n

ELIZA<\/em> is thus the first program to (almost) pass the Turing test: Its artificial intelligence was so far on a par with human intelligence that the two could no longer be distinguished by some participants. Even then, this raised uncomfortable questions: If AI can do everything we can do, and do it more intelligently and efficiently, what will keep us from being replaced by it? And if even we can no longer distinguish between AI and humans, what makes us human at all? <\/p>\n\n

The ELIZA effect demonstrates how quickly people attribute human characteristics to a machine. This is an important insight for AI communication: approachability can make a technology more accessible, but it should not obscure what a system is actually capable of. <\/p>\n\n

Indescribably uncanny: Why AIs must not be too similar to us<\/h2>\n\n

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