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Heiko Drewes, Abdullatif Dinc, Florian Alt
Investigating Mutual Gaze in Real-Time LLM-Driven Avatar Interaction on 2D Screens
ETRA 2026, 1. - 4. June 2026 at Marrakesh, Morocco (bib)

With the growing presence of AI-driven avatars in everyday applications, understanding how users perceive and respond to such agents becomes increasingly important. A key open question is whether gaze awareness, an avatarâs ability to react to the gaze of a user, contributes to more natural and socially engaging interaction, particularly on conventional 2D screens. We present a real-time system that integrates live speech recognition, LLM-generated responses, and gaze feedback to enable naturalistic unscripted conversations with a virtual avatar. We conducted a within-subjects study (N = 17) comparing a gaze-aware avatar with a nonreactive baseline. The results of the eye-tracking show that gaze awareness significantly altered user eye movement patterns, increasing mutual gaze episodes, and generating subconscious gaze regulation. Our findings demon strate that realistic gaze behavior affects user interaction on a subconscious level, even outside immersive environments. We discuss implications for designing future conversational AI systems that foster natural social presence.