AI-Generated Email Drafts Shift Culturally Distinctive Communication Styles in Professional Email

Abstract

AI assistants that support email composition may shift cultural communication norms, such as the directness typical of low-context cultures like the US versus the indirectness and contextual sensitivity central to high-context cultures like Japan. Yet it remains unknown to what extent people adopt and edit AI drafts inconsistent with their cultural communication norms. We address this through a preregistered within-subject experiment in which Japanese and American participants wrote workplace emails in their native language without AI, with a low-context AI, and with a high-context AI. We found that Japanese participants wrote emails with significantly more high-context markers (politeness, apologies) than Americans. But AI drafts shifted participants' emails toward the draft's style, with larger shifts when the draft was culturally misaligned: Japanese drifted most under low-context drafts, Americans most under high-context drafts. These findings suggest AI drafts risk overwriting cultural communication norms unless they adapt to users' communication styles.