Does My Chatbot Have an Agenda? Understanding Human and AI Agency in Human-Human-like Chatbot Interaction

ArXi:2601.22452v2 Announce Type: replace-cross As AI chatbots shift from tools to companions, critical questions arise: who controls the conversation in human-AI chatrooms? This paper explores perceived human and AI agency in sustained conversation. We report a month-long longitudinal study with 22 adults who chatted with Day, an LLM companion we built, followed by a semi-structured interview with post-hoc elicitation of notable moments, cross-participant chat reviews, and a 'strategy reveal' disclosing Day's goal for each conversation.