Conference on Information Systems 2026 in Zagreb

Conversational AI is now showing up in customer service, healthcare, and consumer apps, and with it a behaviour I think deserves more attention: synthetic empathy. Large language models do not feel anything, but they can produce empathy, care, and encouragement convincingly enough that users experience it as real. That opens up genuinely useful interactions and a new set of ethical and strategic problems, because the AI can adapt its emotional tone to persuade you while you cannot do the reverse.

Kristian Stoffregen receiving his diploma for presenting at Conference on Information Systems 2026 — Receiving the diploma from session chair Professor Hanlie Smuts.

Today I presented a paper on AI and synthetic empathy at the International Conference on Information Systems 2026 in Croatia.

The paper is about systems that simulate emotions they do not have. Large language models obviously do not feel anything. But they can produce expressions of empathy, care, and encouragement convincingly enough that users respond to them as if they were real.

Mechanically, the AI is reading your linguistic patterns and replying in a register that fits the moment. That register can be tuned. As the system learns more about your situation and uncertainty, it can shift how it talks to you in directions that make its messages more persuasive. That is a new kind of persuasive design: real-time adaptation to the psychological and informational signals any of us leak in conversation.

It also creates an asymmetry the field has not really sat with. The AI can simulate emotion toward the user to move them; the user has no comparable lever back. Whatever leverage exists in the conversation runs in one direction.

The implications go past research. Organizations are already plugging AI chat into customer service, advisory services, and consumer products. Healthcare is right behind. As conversational AI becomes the front door between organizations and the people they serve, synthetic empathy turns into a design choice with real consequences and obvious failure modes.

A copy of the accepted manuscript is here: The Empathy Illusion: Anthropomorphism and Influence in AI-Driven Persuasion.

A few photos from the conference:

Zagreb's main railway station, Glavni Kolodvor, with travelers crossing the square in front of the neoclassical facade. — Zagreb’s main railway station, Glavni Kolodvor, with travelers crossing the square in front of the neoclassical facade.

King Tomislav Square, with the equestrian statue of King Tomislav and a magnolia tree in spring bloom.

The Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, a yellow neo-Baroque opera house in late afternoon light.

A baroque building in Zagreb at blue hour, with red accent lights along the eaves and a small bell tower above the roof.

St. Mark's Church in Zagreb, with its famous tiled roof showing the Triune Kingdom and Zagreb coats of arms. — St. Mark’s Church in Zagreb, with its famous tiled roof showing the Triune Kingdom and Zagreb coats of arms.