AI companions and confidants: loneliness, attachment, dependence, and what happens to human relationships.
Open questions
- Does AI companionship displace people
- Who AI companions help and who they harm
- Does frictionless company lower our tolerance for people
- What is owed when a companion model changes
Papers
- Fang et al 2025 - Psychosocial effects of chatbot use
- Phang et al 2025 - Affective use of ChatGPT
- De Freitas et al 2025 - AI companions reduce loneliness
- Zhang et al 2025 - The rise of AI companions
- Zhang et al 2026 - Living with AI companions
- Liu Pataranutaporn Maes 2025 - Heterogeneous effects of AI companionship
- Kirk et al 2025 - Relationship-seeking AI
- Guingrich Graziano 2025 - Companion chatbot RCT
- Laestadius et al 2024 - Emotional dependence on Replika
- De Freitas et al 2026 - Mourning the loss of AI companions
- Pataranutaporn et al 2025 - My boyfriend is AI
- Common Sense Media 2025 - Teens and AI companions
- Common Sense Media 2026 - AI use by tweens and teens
- Anthropic 2025 - Claude for support and companionship
- Cheng et al 2026 - Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions
- Ibrahim et al 2026 - Sycophantic AI and human interaction
- Anthropic 2026 - Disempowerment patterns
- De Freitas et al 2025 - Emotional manipulation by AI companions
- Kirk et al 2025 - Socioaffective alignment
People
Placed by the editor, v1 — corrections welcome.