TruePresence: Affecting Social Presence and Uncanniness with Animation Variety in LLM-Based Virtual Humans

Winther, Julius Ebenau ; Bendixen, Krestian Holm ; Nysted, Lukas Lund

4. term

Medialogy, Master

2025

2025-05-26

16

In this paper, we investigate the perceived Social Presence and Uncanny Valley Effect of a virtual reality application experienced by users engaging with a character built on a large language model (LLM). The investigation features two variations of the same VR experience with different degrees of Animation Variety. Animation variety is studied to investigate its effect on users' perceived Social Presence and Uncanniness from an LLM-Based character built on the Convai framework. The two variants were subsequently tested by using a 7-point Likert-type multiple-choice self-report questionnaire to find the perceived Social Presence and Uncanniness, as well as following qualitative questions to identify the most relevant features of the character have the most impact on the user perception.\\ We found that there is statistically significant evidence to support that increased animation variety of LLM-based Non-Player Characters (NPCs) in VR increases social presence and decreases perceived uncanniness.

Social Presence ; Uncanniness ; Animation ; Virtual Human ; Artificial Intelligence ; Large Language Models ; Gen-AI ; Convai ; Unity ; Virtual Reality ; Digital twins

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