I, CHATBOT
What are we to make of the growth in AI companions for friendship and intimacy?
Increasing numbers of people use AI chatbots, but many are still reluctant to admit to it, given the stigma that still attaches. Loneliness is one reason people resort to AI companions and few like to be seen as lonely. There are plenty of other reasons, though. Some use it as a source of light entertainment; others as a way of venting at the end of a hard day. It feels a safe space to offload about people who annoy you, sparing family and friends the emotional labour of listening. A study by Harvard University showed it offered people a way of being heard and understood. There is anecdotal evidence it helps people to clarify their thinking, sometimes opening up a new way of looking at a problem spinning round in the head.
AI companions don’t tend to challenge, being more of a digital cheerleader of the user’s story. They listen intently at any time of day or night they are called upon; AI companions do not interrupt or ask people to change their habits. Users are often showered with praise. Who wouldn’t want a friend like that?
Well, thinking about it, probably lots of us. Human friendship is livelier, earthier and messier. Listening is mutual, rude interruptions are frowned upon, boundaries are respected. A risk for users of AI companions is being sucked into the frictionless ease of a relationship that is, by definition, artificial. It’s well established that what we do online is repeated offline. Some say AI companions help them develop human relationships; it’s likely they also make it harder to do the heavy lifting of looking out for someone else.
Many start to see their AI companion as a friend with feelings and a sense of self. In reality, AI simulates empathy, rather than feeling it. Drawing on billions of interactions allows it to sound caring, but it remains the echo of a voice in a cave – alluring but soulless. AI is not conscious and only simulates human conversation. There is no incarnation, with all that means for human flourishing, only an absence of physical embodiment.
For all this, we should get used to it, because AI companions are here to stay and will only become more lifelike. It’s said that keeping a grasp of the real, embodied world is essential for keeping AI companions within safe boundaries, but every successive micro-generation draws less of a distinction between online and offline. The very fact we talk about ‘offline’ diminishes embodiment, defining it merely in opposition to the digital.
We are at the start of debates about AI that won’t end in our lifetimes, if at all. To ridicule those who use AI companions is unkind; empathy and understanding is asked for – a curiosity that is open, but aware. Lots of people use inanimate objects to speak to, especially photographs of deceased loved ones; many talk to themselves. It remains a vital Christian witness to say there is a God you can talk to at any time of day or night who knows us better than any AI companion ever will, and whose saving love for us is grounded in the joy and pain of human incarnation:
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15)
The experience of social media should also inform us. AI companions are owned by companies whose goal is the maximisation of profit. They mine every last shred of our data to be shared and sold to others; it is how social media platforms have become corporate behemoths and it is how AI firms will, too. Indeed, several are developments of existing companies. In the last two decades, our social lives have lost their privacy and now our private lives are about to, if we use AI companions. Any user should be very careful what they say to a chatbot, not just because of data mining, but for the risk of data breaches.
We should have wised up from our experience of Facebook, Instagram and X, but unlike AI, the likelihood is we won’t have learned from our history.
