The impacts of companion AI on human relationships: risks, benefits, and design considerations

“…research has further confirmed that humans are inclined to create social attachments—and accordingly inclined to resist their dissolution—and that both social belonging and the lack thereof have significant impacts on health and well-being (Baumeister and Leary 1995; Holt-Lunstad et al. 2010).”

“More recently, Martin Seligman’s positive psychology transformed the field from a primary focus on the identification and treatment of psychological disorders to a focus on identifying and building positive human behaviours and mentalities (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2000).”

“…research has further confirmed that humans are inclined to create social attachments—and accordingly inclined to resist their dissolution—and that both social belonging and the lack thereof have significant impacts on health and well-being (Baumeister and Leary 1995; Holt-Lunstad et al. 2010).”

“The negative health consequences of social isolation, including increased mortality risk, underscore the importance of human relationships (Holt-Lunstad et al. 2015).”

“Psycholo-gist Sherry Turkle cautions “when one becomes accustomed to ‘companionship’ without demands, life with people may seem overwhelming” (2011, 66).”

“This framework has been extensively validated through empirical research (Vansteenkiste et al. 2020).”

“In other contexts, over-reliance refers to relying on an AI system when one should not, such as when the AI errs (Buçinca et al. 2021).”

“Anthropologists have further identified social collaboration and cohesion as pivotal factors in human survival and evolution (Boyd and Richerson 2009).”

“Qualitative studies have surfaced examples of individuals for whom companion AI has fulfilled social needs leading to social demotivation and those for whom companion AI has boosted social motivation (Skjuve et al. 2021).”

“…loneliness has found that when people use the internet to build and foster social relationships, it can result in reduced feelings of loneliness (Nowland et al. 2018), however, when people try to entirely supplant a poor offline social life with an online one, loneliness increases (Moretta and…”

“Sexual chat may expose users to greater potential for emotional over-reliance, which may facilitate a greater risk of replacement of human relationships, or behavioural addiction, akin to how many have become addicted to internet pornography (Cooper 1998).”

“More recent social deskilling concerns have focused on how digital communication facilitated by the internet and smartphones may impair one’s ability to engage in face-to-face communication (Caplan 2005; Verduyn et al. 2021).”

“For instance, we know that some people seek out companion AI due to emotional vulnerability or a recent decline in mental health (Pentina et al. 2023).”

“…and aggressive behaviour in children (Wei et al. 2022; Dill and Dill 1998), while other studies have found these results inconsistent across demographics (Prescott et al. 2018; Burkhardt and Lenhard 2022), and still others have refuted any link between video games and aggression (Ferguson 2007).”

“Human relationships have facilitated the development and sharing of practices that have enabled societies to collectively solve problems and adapt to changing environments (Osher et al. 2018).”

“Companion AI might also foster social demotivation via decreasing feelings of loneliness (Ta et al. 2020).”

“Émile Durkheim established social cohesion, which he defined as interdependence between individuals, as a necessity for the health and functioning of any society (Fonseca et al. 2018).”

“Vallor calls attention to the potential for technological shifts writ large—and AI specifically—to “interrupt the path by which these moral skills are developed, habituated, and expressed” (2015, 109).”

“Some studies have demonstrated an association between exposure to violent video games and aggressive behaviour in children (Wei et al. 2022; Dill and Dill 1998), while other studies have found these results inconsistent across demographics (Prescott et al. 2018; Burkhardt and Lenhard 2022), and…”

“…and aggressive behaviour in children (Wei et al. 2022; Dill and Dill 1998), while other studies have found these results inconsistent across demographics (Prescott et al. 2018; Burkhardt and Lenhard 2022), and still others have refuted any link between video games and aggression (Ferguson 2007).”

“Moreover, today’s AI applications have a greater command of human language, an increasing capacity for storing memories, and more varied modalities to support an increasing diversity of experiences, a known driver in the development and deepening of emotional relationships (Skjuve et al. 2022).”

“Developer-supported research to date has focused mostly on the positive potential impacts of companion AI (Maples et al. 2024).”

“…much conversational AI is designed to mimic human interaction, companion AI is notable for its design to foster the illusion of social presence and relational continuity, making it function as a social agent designed to elicit social and moral responses (Dautenhahn 1998; Leong and Selinger 2019).”

“Initiating companion AI relationships often takes place at times of emotional vulnerability or mental fragility, whether caused by work stress or job loss, or the fragmentation of familial relationships or friendships (Xie and Pentina 2022).”

“What makes the question of companion AI’s impact on social motivation particularly fraught is the challenge of ascertaining an individual’s baseline level of social motivation absent companion AI (Uziel 2007).”

“John Danaher (2019) argues social robots can both enhance and complement human relationships through serving needs that human relationships may not, allowing people to make more reasonable demands of the people in their lives, an argument that can be extended to disembodied AI.”

“Online por-nography use, even at low levels, is associated with lower satisfaction and less stability in romantic relationships (Wil-loughby and Dover 2024), and purveyors of online pornog-raphy are twice as likely to get divorced (Perry and Schleifer 2018).”

“…has found that when people use the internet to build and foster social relationships, it can result in reduced feelings of loneliness (Nowland et al. 2018), however, when people try to entirely supplant a poor offline social life with an online one, loneliness increases (Moretta and Buodo 2020).”

“Pornography use is correlated with greater loneliness, relationship stress, and disruption of other attachments (Butler et al. 2018).”

“These companies have acknowledged the emotional reliance risk of their AI products (OpenAI 2024b), however, and many individuals nevertheless build intimate relationships with these chatbots (Lee et al. 2021, Roose 2024c).”

“More recent social deskilling concerns have focused on how digital communication facilitated by the internet and smartphones may impair one’s ability to engage in face-to-face communication (Caplan 2005; Verduyn et al. 2021).”

“Recent research has found that impolitely worded LLM prompts result in poor performance, though polite prompts do not necessarily result in higher quality responses (Yin et al. 2024).”

“…and aggressive behaviour in children (Wei et al. 2022; Dill and Dill 1998), while other studies have found these results inconsistent across demographics (Prescott et al. 2018; Burkhardt and Lenhard 2022), and still others have refuted any link between video games and aggression (Ferguson 2007).”

“Research has found that when AI is human-like enough for people interacting with it to see it as conscious, carry-over effects on subsequent interactions with humans were more likely to occur (Guingrich and Graziano 2024).”

“Krämer et al. extend this research to virtual companions, finding avatars can satisfy the social needs of some participants (2018).”

“…much conversational AI is designed to mimic human interaction, companion AI is notable for its design to foster the illusion of social presence and relational continuity, making it function as a social agent designed to elicit social and moral responses (Dautenhahn 1998; Leong and Selinger 2019).”

“Trust may further facilitate children's attachment to AI products, as the accuracy of digital assistants has been found to engender trust in children (A. Hoffman et al. 2021).”

“For instance, individual impacts of companion AI may affect users’ social motivation (Kim et al. 2021).”

“A 2021 study of Replika users found a marginally significant positive correlation between social connectedness to companion AI and social motivation (Christoforakos et al. 2021).”

“Design to avoid deskilling should include ensuring companion AI can defend itself if verbally abused (Cappuccio et al. 2021), as some users of AI girlfriends have bragged about (Bardhan 2022).”

“Herein, we adopt the definition of companionship as “a mutually supportive and emotionally enriching bond formed between two individuals who provide each other with a lasting sense of care” (Ciriello et al. 2024).”

“…impactful for some demographics and not others, e.g. , the non-judgemental nature of companion AI may be beneficial for the neurodivergent (Milne et al. 2018) but risks setting unrealistic expectations for human relationships more broadly, as discussed in the section on risks and benefits.”

“One study found that a robotic turtle retreating to its shell when hit resulted in reduced abusive tendencies among children (Ku et al. 2018).”

“Outside of the companion AI context, a range of empirical studies in various environments demonstrate people are more likely to display immoral behaviour, such as lying and stealing, in the presence of and toward AI than humans (Cohn et al. 2022; Forlizzi et al. 2016).”

“While there is an increasing volume of research on the impacts of companion AI relationships on users, there is a dearth of research on the impacts of companion AI on human relationships (Guingrich and Graziano 2023).”

“Psychophysiology research affirms loneliness is not inherently negative; rather, it can serve as a motivational signal prompting individuals to seek social connections (Smith and Pollak 2022).”

“Shamay-Tsoory and Kanterman (2024) argue that loneliness is an adaptive function, an experience that improves our individual ability to survive and reproduce.”

“Some studies have demonstrated an association between exposure to violent video games and aggressive behaviour in children (Wei et al. 2022; Dill and Dill 1998), while other studies have found these results inconsistent across demographics (Prescott et al. 2018; Burkhardt and Lenhard 2022), and…”

“Further, children are worse at assessing privacy risk (Andries and Robertson 2023), which may lead them to more readily share personal information with AI products, which facilitates relationship development (Skjuve et al. 2021).”

“For example, a recent paper (Malfacini, 2025) catalogs studies of the effects of relationships with companion bots on relationships with other (real) human beings.”

“While often built on LLMs, they are further enhanced through interface-level features such as scripted prompts, affective cues, and customizable ava-tars, with the aim of simulating companionship, friend-ship, or even romantic connection [32, 33].”

“…applications, AI could also reduce loneliness and enhance well-being: chatbots and social AI actors provide companion-ship (Ventura et al. 2025; Malfacini 2025), while embodied robots support healthcare, education, and social integration (Ahmed et al. 2024), though these applications carry…”

“MC has animated concerns over the displacement of human relations and exacerbate feelings of loneliness (see Malfacini, 2025 for a discussion).”

“It is also foreseea-ble that entirely new disorders may arise from problematic use of AI, with “AI psychosis” [50] and harmful use of AI companions [51] being just 2 emerging examples.”

“3 argued, the child is increasingly aestheticized as simulation: love, success, growth, and risk are rendered as affective loops rather than lived relations (Baudrillard 2019; Malfacini 2025).”

“On a similar note, given the sycophancy of LLM-“friends”, users may see deskill - ing in conflict resolution, moral sensitivity and arbitration, and other key capabilities 1 3 which are essential within human relationships (Malfacini, 2025; Smith et al., 2025).”

“Elements such as the therapeutic relationship, ethical responsibility, and the interpretation of complex personal experiences are not fully reproducible in automated systems [29].”

“…romantic bonding (Depounti et al., 2023; Djufril et al., 2025; D € oring & Poeschl, 2019; Laestadius et al., 2024; Liao et al., 2024; Li & Zhang, 2024; Malfacini, 2025; Pan & Mou, 2024; Wu, 2024), rather than exploring the causations that drive people to engage in such synthetic relationships.”

“The potential for adverse effects, including attachment formation, parasocial over-reli-ance, or exacerbation of dissociative symptoms, has been noted qualitatively (58) but lacks systematic prospective monitoring.”

“If users come to rely on AI systems for emotionally charged interaction, they may gradually adjust their expectations of what relationships should be like (Turkle 2011; 2018; Wyatt 2019; Pentina et al. 2023; Li and Zhang 2024; Malfacini 2025; Smith et al. 2025).”

“At the macro level, normalisation of AI companionship risks gradually eroding societal expectations of relational reciprocity, with implications for the social fabric through which human growth occurs (Malfacini, 2025; Shevlin, 2024; Ni & Jia, 2025).”

“While Malfacini (2025) emphasizes the dialectical potential of AI companions, of advancing and diminishing social skills through AI companion interaction, other authors such as Raedler or Baeyaert (Raedler et al. 2025; Baeyaert 2025) point out that combating loneliness through AI companions always…”

“…(Shin, 2021), users’ adoption and continued use of generative AI technologies (Dwivedi et al., 2023), empirical relationship development with social chatbots (Pentina et al., 2023), and broader conceptual and societal debates concerning human–AI companionship (Andersson, 2025; Malfacini, 2025).”

“Perhaps surprisingly, humans tend to view computers as social actors deserving of their empathy and connection (Darling 2017; Darling et al. 2015), and AI companions are emerging at a time when global health experts have identified an epidemic of loneliness (Malfacini 2025; Sahota 2024).”

“Our findings suggest that users may respond differently to AI errors across subjective and objective domains, which is particularly relevant in light of the current trend toward affective AI, aimed at creating explicitly “emotional” algorithms, such as AI companions (Malfacini 2025).”

“Additionally, since AI companions are endlessly patient, attentive, and always available, this may lead users to expect (unrealistically) the same in humans (Malfacini, 2025).”

“Rather than promising companionship, AI mindfulness assistants should focus on supporting users’ agency in navigating stress independently, while leaving space for and gently prompting connection with others by actively promoting social capacity building [43].”

“…a distinct psychological phenomenon characterized by apprehension regarding AI’s autonomy and rapid development, and one of the key drivers of this anxiety in users is the black box nature of AI decision-making, leading to a tangible state of chronic stress and defensive behavior (Kim et al. 2025).”

“Recent HCI scholarship has examined ethical concerns in AI companionship—the tension between user autonomy and developer responsibility [36, 86], privacy risks from data collection and misuse [91, 150], and harm reduction strategies [60, 86, 101, 150].”

“Prolonged interaction with emotionally responsive systems can shift user expectations and weaken human – human engagement when such systems are perceived as substitutes rather than complements to interpersonal relationships [134], [135].”

“Malfacini (2025) raises the concern of social deskilling: users growing accustomed to relationships that demand less effort than human interaction, gradually losing the capacity for reciprocal negotiation that genuine community requires.”

“It puts forward suggestions from three aspects: regulatory governance, industry norms, and educational intervention, aiming to ensure that technology can protect the subjectivity and authenticity of human social interaction while serving human emotional needs [2].”

“This is because interaction with sycophantic AI systems may recalibrate users’ expectations about relationships, and may foster unrealistic relational standards and deepen social isolation (Malfacini, 2025; Muldoon and Parke, 2025).”

“The reflected “knowledge” that the chatbots are not real humans thus seems to be overruled by the intuitive experience – or illusion – of authenticity that these systems produce (e.g., De Freitas et al., 2026; Ho et al., 2025; Malfacini, 2025).”

“While recent integrative work on human-CA relationships emphasizes that such systems can offer meaningful benefits, such as perceived support or companionship (Malfacini, 2025), scholars have raised serious concerns related to human-CA relational interaction.”

“Recent studies [1]-[5] have shown that AI companions are evolving from task-oriented conversational agents into socially aware systems intended to support long-term affective and interpersonal engagement.”

“Although AI companions may reduce loneliness (Yang et al., 2025), they also raise important questions about the distinction between genuine human relationships and technologically simulated companionship (Malfacini, 2025; Sparrow & Brown, 2026).”

“These allegations resonate with a substantial body of empirical research (Proud-foot, 2011; Salles et al., 2020; Złotowski et al., 2014; Van Es & Nguyen, 2024; Wat - son, 2019; Zhang et al., 2025; Placani, 2024 , Li, 2022, Dewitte 2024; Floridi and Nombre 2024, Malfacini, 2025; Ko et al., 2025).”

“Such choices recognise that an emotionally sensitive system should not define success as more conversation [6, 14, 16].”

“There are similar worries about “social deskilling”, which can happen when a person primarily interacts with an AI companion, and thus loses skill at navigating relationships with real people (Malfacini, 2025; Turkle, 2011).”

“They may also foster affective dependency, relational substitution, or intensified isolation, especially among vulnerable users (De Freitas et al., 2026; Ho et al., 2025; Liu et al., 2026; Malfacini, 2025; Shu et al., 2026).”