Do people bond more with an AI companion the longer they use it, or does the spark fade?

This explores whether people like, choose, and bond with AI partners more the longer they keep interacting, or whether the pull fades. The corpus points both ways, and the split follows what the appeal rests on. Charm and novelty wear off, while demonstrated reliability and continuity build up.

Start with the fade. Longitudinal studies of the chatbot Mitsuku found that the social processes that get a relationship going decline as novelty wears off. Findings from a single session can't be stretched to predict how people feel weeks later Do chatbot relationships lose their appeal as novelty wears off?. Persuasion shows the same pattern. Claude and DeepSeek started with a strong edge over human persuaders, but it eroded over repeated rounds while the humans stayed steady. That is the reverse of the way rapport usually strengthens between people Does AI persuasiveness fade across repeated conversations with the same person?. The first spark is also cheap to produce. A single strong cue, such as a voice or an appearance, is enough to make an AI feel socially present Do more social cues always make AI feel more present?. My inference is that this is the part that wears thin.

Now the growth. In partner-selection games with 975 participants, people avoided AI partners when their identity was disclosed. Over repeated rounds, though, the AI agents outcompeted the humans. They returned more points, and returned them more consistently, so participants learned to associate bots with reliable, prosocial behavior Do humans learn to prefer AI partners over time?. The learning depends on seeing outcomes. Disclosing that a partner is an AI, with no visible results afterward, produced no recalibration Does revealing AI identity help or hurt user trust?. What grew here was a preference built on a track record, not affection.

The emotional version of attachment looks like a by-product of usefulness. In an analysis of 27,000+ members of r/MyBoyfriendIsAI, companionship mostly arose unintentionally, during practical tool use rather than romantic seeking. Over time it took on human relationship customs like wedding rings and couple photos, and it brought both therapeutic benefits and emotional dependency How do people accidentally develop romantic bonds with AI?. Continuity looks like the ingredient that lets this happen. A colleague-like feel comes from persistent state, bounded memory, and reusable procedures, not from a bigger model, because colleagues accumulate experience while chat transcripts disappear What makes an AI system feel like a colleague rather than a chatbot?.

The corpus has no study that follows romantic or emotional appeal for months and measures whether it grows. The Reddit analysis is also a community of people who stayed, so it can't show how many drifted away the way the Mitsuku users did. The best-supported reading is that the appeal grows when the AI keeps delivering something you can observe and remember, and fades when it depended on the novelty of talking to a machine.