anthropomorphize

• anthropomorphise (non-Oxford British spelling)

By surface analysis, anthropo- +‎ morph +‎ -ize.

• IPA^(key): /ˌanθɹəpəˈmɔːfʌɪz/

anthropomorphize (third-person singular simple present anthropomorphizes, present participle anthropomorphizing, simple past and past participle anthropomorphized)

1. (transitive) To endow with human qualities.
2. (transitive) To attribute human-like characteristics to (something that is non-human).
   • 2018 June 15, Emma Brockes, “No, Facebook, I won’t be back. I’ve seen the dangers of habitual sharing”, in The Guardian‎:

     It has been two months since I last checked my feed, during which time Facebook has sent me notifications I didn't sign up for, informing me every time someone posts, and invited me to attend locally organised focus groups. […] Of course, I am anthropomorphising a machine; no one is in charge of all this.

   • 2023 February 9, Ted Chiang, “ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web”, in The New Yorker‎:

     I do think that this perspective offers a useful corrective to the tendency to anthropomorphize large-language models, but there is another aspect to the compression analogy that is worth considering.