Gamifying intimacy: AI-driven affective engagement and human-virtual human relationships

“XingYe’s markets exemplify Berlant’s (1998) ‘public intimacy’ reconfigured for the age of platform capitalism.”

“While existing scholarship has interrogated digital intimacy through human-to-human mediated interactions – dating apps (Hobbs et al., 2017; Miles, 2017), online relationships (Subrahmanyam and Šmahel, 2011) and cybersex (Banerjee and Rao, 2021) – the rise of AI-driven companions necessitates a…”

“Intimacy, as Jamieson (2011, 2013) posits, is cultivated through shared experiences and physical co-presence, yet it also transcends spatial boundaries, manifesting in digitally mediated interactions that approximate the affective resonance of in-person engagement.”

“Taking this argument further, Boyd and Holton (2017) identify two analytical positions regarding technological innovation and social change: one views robotics and AI as incremental advancements within a broader historical trajectory, while the other considers them as catalysts for unprecedented…”

“…relational depth as a series of computational tasks, including daily chat quotas, gacha-style draws and progress bars, the platform operationalises the (re)production of affective labour, wherein affective exchanges are systematised, measured and optimised for efficiency (Ge, 2024; Oksala, 2016).”

“Hepp (2020) classifies communicative bots into three categories: artificial companions, social bots and work bots.”

“While existing scholarship has interrogated digital intimacy through human-to-human mediated interactions – dating apps (Hobbs et al., 2017; Miles, 2017), online relationships (Subrahmanyam and Šmahel, 2011) and cybersex (Banerjee and Rao, 2021) – the rise of AI-driven companions necessitates a…”

“It also extends Jamieson (2013) and Dalessandro (2018)’s work on digitally mediated intimacy, revealing how platforms incentivise users to market vulnerability as a crowdsourced product.”

“These technologies operationalise what Lin (2024) terms the ‘robotisation of love’, where algorithmic efficiency, predictability and quantifiable progression reshape how users experience connection.”

“However, such mechanics – while ostensibly enhancing user immersion – also serve to prolong app engagement, incentiv-ising data generation through iterative experimentation (Gallagher, 2017).”

“…scholarship has interrogated digital intimacy through human-to-human mediated interactions – dating apps (Hobbs et al., 2017; Miles, 2017), online relationships (Subrahmanyam and Šmahel, 2011) and cybersex (Banerjee and Rao, 2021) – the rise of AI-driven companions necessitates a paradigm shift.”

“It also extends Jamieson (2013) and Dalessandro (2018)’s work on digitally mediated intimacy, revealing how platforms incentivise users to market vulnerability as a crowdsourced product.”

“In debt to Ellis, we do not narrate our stories using ‘a traditional authorial voice’ (Ellis et al., 2018: 131), but ‘analysis’ appears in the juxtaposition of many voices, their resounding together.”

“The term ‘virtual human’ encompasses AI-driven entities designed to foster a sense of emotional commitment in users (Yamaguchi, 2020).”

“…scholarship has interrogated digital intimacy through human-to-human mediated interactions – dating apps (Hobbs et al., 2017; Miles, 2017), online relationships (Subrahmanyam and Šmahel, 2011) and cybersex (Banerjee and Rao, 2021) – the rise of AI-driven companions necessitates a paradigm shift.”

“Social bots, by contrast, are algorithmically controlled accounts that simulate human interaction on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter (Gehl and Bakardjieva, 2016).”

“…not only contests Eurocentric paradigms of intimacy — rooted in ideals of romantic individualism and nuclear domesticity — but also fosters emergent, pluralized modes of connection that re fl ect the technocultural logics of platform capitalism (Ge & Hu, 2025; Illouz, 2018; Steinberg et al., 2024).”

“…field, characterization has often been used to improve chatbots’ credibility and storytelling, but critics have highlighted issues including the use of gender representations and stereotypes (Chen, 2025), the potential for manipulation (Natale, 2021) and gamification dynamics (Ge and Hu, 2025).”

“Moreover, socio-communicative research has shown that the gamified design of AI compan-ions encourages sustained engagement (Ge & Hu, 2025), that these companions reflect a broader “robotization” of love characterized by efficiency and predictability (Lin, 2024), and that the platforms may foster…”

“Recent scholarship has examined generative AI within cultural production, particularly through studies of AI companionship and synthetic intimacy, showing how these systems organise affective engagement and appropriate forms of immaterial labour (Ge and Hu, 2025; Chen, 2025).”

“Our results show that Chinese public exhibits a positive attitude toward this feature, which is suggested by prior studies that anthropomorphism is a key driver of human-AI intimacy and can foster emotional attachment (Hu et al., 2025; Pentina et al., 2023).”

“[56] Reward mechanics, emotional interaction metrics, and narrative development simulate intimacy.”

“…computational and reduces relational depth to quanti fi able, predictable, and controllable metrics (e.g. the workload of fan artworks and the frequency of interactions); on the other hand, it exempli fi es the neoliberal commodi fi cation of intimacy under platform capitalism (Ge and Hu, 2025).”

“On the other hand, discussions and practices surrounding “AI lovers” and “digital companionship” have gained visibility on social media platforms, generating forms of experiential sharing and cultural production (Ge & Hu, 2025).”

“” Unlike XingYe , another Chinese AI companion app where the “player” persona is a deliberate, gamified design choice to boost engagement [51], Soul’s “player” emerged as an unintended bypr-oduct of its one-to-many technical architecture.”

“In addition, interactive mechanisms such as gamification and real-time feedback may further stimulate affective involvement and participatory behavior (Boyle et al., 2016; Ge and Hu, 2025).”

“Many AI companion encounters are explicitly organized as playful or exploratory spaces in which conflict and transgression may be experienced as desirable parts of the interaction (Ge & Hu, 2025).”