AI Companions Reduce Loneliness

Chatbots are now able to engage in sophisticated conversations with consumers in the domain of relationships, providing a potential coping solution to widescale societal loneliness. Behavioral research provides little insight into whether these applications are effective at alleviating loneliness. We address this question by focusing on “AI companions”: applications designed to provide consumers with synthetic interaction partners. Studies 1 and 2 find suggestive evidence that consumers use AI companions to alleviate loneliness, by employing a novel methodology for fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) to detect loneliness in conversations and reviews. Study 3 finds that AI companions successfully alleviate loneliness on par only with interacting with another person, and more than other activities such watching YouTube videos. Moreover, consumers underestimate the degree to which AI companions improve their loneliness. Study 4 uses a longitudinal design and finds that an AI companion consistently reduces loneliness over the course of a week. Study 5 provides evidence that both the chatbots’ performance and, especially, whether it makes users feel heard, explain reductions in loneliness.

Introduction. Thanks to advances in ‘generative AI’ algorithms, AI companions are now commercially available. These are applications that utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to offer consumers the opportunity to engage in emotional interactions like friendship and romance. AI companions are synthetic interaction partners that offer emotional support, distinguishing them from broader relational AI applications that include varied human-computer interactions such as virtual customer service agents, educational tutors, AI assistants such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, or voice- activated assistants like Siri. Algorithms used in AI companions produce complex answers to an exceedingly wide range of prompts, making them sufficiently mature to power sophisticated interactions with consumers. Although these systems are truly incapable of feeling real emotions, concern, or caring, they can generate language that creates the perception of empathy. Generative AI is forecasted to grow into an impressive $1.3 trillion market by 2032 (Catsaros 2023), suggesting a concomitant rise in AI companion platforms.

Discussion / Conclusion. GENERAL DISCUSSION We considered whether AI companions (applications that utilize AI to provide synthetic social interactions) can reduce loneliness. Study 1 suggests that at least some consumers use AI companion apps to alleviate loneliness, as some expressed loneliness-related thoughts explicitly in naturalistic conversations with a chatbot. Study 2 found that loneliness-related content is present in App Store reviews for a number of companion AIs, and that app reviews mentioning loneliness tend to receive higher ratings, possibly because they effectively alleviate loneliness by making users feel heard. Study 3 found that AI companions successfully alleviate loneliness on par only with interacting with another person, whereas watching YouTube videos or doing nothing do not. Furthermore, participants underestimate the degree to which AI companions improve their loneliness relative to their true feelings after interacting with such AI.