Possibilities of Androids as poetry-reciting agent

In recent years, research has increased on very human-like androids, generally investigating the following: (1) how people treat such very human-like androids and (2) whether it is possible to replace such existing communication media as telephones or TV conference systems with androids as a communication medium. We found that androids have advantages over humans in specific contexts. For example, in a collaboration theatrical project between artists and androids, audiences were impressed by the androids that read poetry. We, therefore, experimentally compared androids and humans in a poetry-reciting context by conducting an experiment to illustrate the influence of an android who recited poetry. Participants listened to poetry that was read by three poetry-reciting agents: the android, the human model on which the android was based, and a box. The experiment results showed that the enjoyment of the poetry gained the highest score under the android condition, indicating that the android has an advantage for communicating the meaning of poetry.