Takuya Maeda

PhD Candidate at Western University.

About

I am a Canada Graduate Research Scholar and 4th year PhD candidate at the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University. My research interests span human-computer interaction and science and technology studies, examining the social and ethical impact of anthropomorphic design in AI systems. My current work frames anthropomorphic AI as a social assemblage that affords parasocial dynamics between users and chatbots, examining how actors within sociotechnical systems (developers, users, media, etc.) collectively animate computational tools, making them seem like social “agents.” My work is supervised by Prof. Luke Stark and is funded by SSHRC CGRS-D. Besides FIMS, I'm affiliated with the Rotman Institute of Philosophy and the Starling Centre For Just Technologies.


In addition to my own research, I am currently engaging in a number of research projects supported by CIFAR and SSHRC, including (1) a project on Eliza effects (funded by CIFAR Catalyst grant) and (2) a project related to privacy dark patterns of AI-generated NPCs in gaming with Prof. Jacquelyn Burkell (funded by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada).


Previously, I worked on a project related to AI literacy and digital divide funded by SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant and SSHRC Catalyst Grant. I completed a master’s program in information science and engineering at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology, where I studied natural language processing and explored research topics related to social computing, health informatics, online abuse and hate speech, and ethics in NLP.

Research Areas

  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Critical Computing
  • AI Ethics
  • Anthropomorphism
  • Sociotechnical Systems
  • Governance, Accountability

    • Selected Publications

    1. Safety Theater in Anthropomorphic AI: Why We Need to Shift from Safety to Accountability Narratives
      Takuya Maeda, Rebecca Buening.
      FAccT 2026
      [PDF] ·
    2. Anthropomorphism as Social Affordance: Charting the Co-Animation of Chatbots into Social “Agents”
      Takuya Maeda, Luke Stark.
      AIES 2025
      [PDF] ·
    3. When Human-AI Interactions Become Parasocial: Agency and Anthropomorphism in Affective Design
      Takuya Maeda, Anabel Quan-Haase.
      FAccT 2024
      [PDF]

    → View all publications & preprints