How the Human-Like Characteristics of AI Assistants Affect Employee Creativity: A Social Network Ties Perspective

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) powered AI assistants provide opportunities to promote employee creativity. However, existing research ignores exploring the impact of AI assistants' unique human-like characteristics on employee creativity, which means there are insufficient practical guidelines for implementing and designing AI assistants to promote employee creativity. Based on social network theory, this study constructs a theoretical model to investigate the relationship between the human-like characteristics of AI assistants and employee creativity and uses structural equation modeling to analyze questionnaire data from 243 employees. The results show that perceived intelligence and anthropomorphism of AI assistants positively influence employees-AI instrumental and expressive ties, both of which can enhance employee creativity. In particular, perceived intelligence has a stronger effect on the employee-AI instrumental ties, while perceived anthropomorphism has a stronger effect on the employee-AI expressive ties. In addition, the interaction intensity weakens the positive effects of perceived anthropomorphism on employee-AI instrumental and expressive ties. These findings provide practical guidance for implementing and designing AI assistants to promote employee creativity.