Journal Article

The Emotional Landscape of Technological Innovation: A Data-Driven Case Study of ChatGPT’s Launch

Burnap, Pete, Williams, Lowri

2025

Overview

The rapid development and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have sparked intense public interest and debate. While these innovations promise to revolutionise various aspects of human life, it is crucial to understand the complex emotional responses they elicit from potential adopters and users. Such findings can offer crucial guidance for stakeholders involved in the development, implementation, and governance of AI technologies like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a large language model (LLM) that garnered significant attention upon its release, enabling more informed decision-making regarding potential challenges and opportunities. While previous studies have employed data-driven approaches towards investigating public reactions to emerging technologies, they often relied on sentiment polarity analysis, which categorises responses as positive or negative. However, this binary approach fails to capture the nuanced emotional landscape surrounding technological adoption. This paper overcomes this limitation by presenting a comprehensive analysis for investigating the emotional landscape surrounding technology adoption by using the launch of ChatGPT as a case study. In particular, a large corpus of social media texts containing references to ChatGPT was compiled. Text mining techniques were applied to extract emotions, capturing a more nuanced and multifaceted representation of public reactions. This approach allows the identification of specific emotions such as excitement, fear, surprise, and frustration, providing deeper insights into user acceptance, integration, and potential adoption of the technology. By analysing this emotional landscape, we aim to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing ChatGPT’s reception and potential long-term impact. Furthermore, we employ topic modelling to identify and extract the common themes discussed across the dataset. This additional layer of analysis allows us to understand the specific aspects of ChatGPT driving different emotional responses. By linking emotions to particular topics, we gain a more contextual understanding of public reaction, which can inform decision-making processes in the development, deployment, and regulation of AI technologies.

• Publisher: MDPI AG
• Subject: Analysis / Artificial intelligence / Case studies / Chatbots / chatgpt / Computers and civilization / Decision making / emerging technologies / Emotional factors / Emotions / emotive language analysis / Forecasts and trends / Innovations / Large language models / Perceptions / Social media / Social networks / Technology adoption / technology barriers / topic modelling