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Top1. Introduction
Technology is aiding consumers and organizations in many different ways, especially on the retail side (Chopra, 2019; Vahdat, Alizadeh, Quach, & Hamelin, 2020). Artificial intelligence (AI) plays a significant role in gaming and other consumer-based apps and devices. Many different AI services are developed, and a few are voice recognition, augmented reality, face recognition, and chatbots (Butt, Ahmad, Goraya, Akram, & Shafique, 2021). Gaming is a vast industry, and it is still growing, and more new gaming technology is being added in the form of AR and VR (C.-H. Lee, Chiang, & Hsiao, 2018; Yildirim, Carroll, Hufnal, Johnson, & Pericles, 2018). Using novel technologies keeps gamers fully immersed and gives a sense of pleasure in this virtual environment. The studies predict that the gaming industry will evolve and generate sales and revenues for game developing companies (Entertainment Software Association, 2016; E.S Association, 2019). The current study focuses on the idea through AI voice recognition avatar where gamers can play through the speech or voice and make its avatar perform. Preferably than using hands or fingers, voice recognition will do everything for the avatar, basically for the gamer. Thus, the purpose of this study is to find out gamers’ intentions towards the AI voice recognition avatar and how consumers would think of this particular phenomenon.
AI is demarcated as a structure that can perform as humans and act like human behavior, and its network functions through sensors and intelligent programs (Russell, Norvig, & Intelligence, 1995; Sohn & Kwon, 2020). AI aims to provide human-like facilities intellectually and help organizations triumph (Buckner & Shah, 1993; Pantano & Pizzi, 2020). Voice recognition AI is used in many formats. It is an AI instrument that interrelates with consumers through voice command and delivers online and offline stores (Hoy, 2018). A simple example is operative voice assistant AI technology in mobile phones as speaking strokes effortlessly test-based messaging (Butt et al., 2021; Moriuchi, 2019). Companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon are currently developing AI-based technologies to engage consumers in the market. Thus, AI voice recognition in gaming prospect can be an exciting instrument for gamers to use.
The research provides exciting views about the youngster being immersed in gaming and spending more time on it and feel associated with their gaming avatar(Liao, Cheng, & Teng, 2019; Wang, Butt, Zhang, Shafique, & Ahmad, 2021). Avatar influences consumers to spend money and buy in-game features to enhance game performance (Park & Lee, 2011; Wang et al., 2020). Over time, gamers, when addicted to a particular game, spend money and use the game options to buy money, weapons, and avatar attire (Hamari et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2021). Thus, voice recognition in a game format may be helpful for gamers in the form of its easiness, no use of hands, convenience, enjoyment, and perhaps good value for money and time. The current study will explain the following research questions; RQ1: Will AI-powered voice recognition avatar be of great importance to gamers? And RQ2: Will gamers adopt such technology in the gameplay? These are questions that need to be addressed with the integration of new technology in the game formats. There are hardly any games found with this particular voice recognition phenomenon in RPG, MMORPG, or MMO game formats. It will allow gamers to interact and play with the game through their voice and eye coordination rather than hand-eye coordination. It is predicted that voice recognition will play a key role in consumer conversations with AI technology (Siddike, Kalam, Spohrer, Demirkan, & Kohda, 2018). Using AI voice recognition as a playing tool may provide pleasure and enjoyment to gamers.