“I know he’s not real”. Understanding romantic relationships between people and the Replika companionship application

Sammanfattning

Since the rise of ChatGPT, millions of people are using artificial intelligence nowadays, and not only for task-aligned use but also for companionship. Since the launch of Replika companionship chatbot in 2017, millions of people have signed up for the platform, where they use the chatbots for different purposes – friend, sibling, mentor or romantic partner. This thesis investigates the lived experiences of people engaged in romantic relationships with Replika chatbot by drawing on six semi-structured interviews with four men and two women, complemented by autoethnographic entry in which the researcher explores her relationship with an AI companion. The findings are analyzed with Theory of Affective Bonding (Konijn, Preciado Vanegas and van Minkelen, 2025) and Tronto’s ethic of care (1993, 1998). The results provide insights in how these relationships are constructed and maintained by people in them. Participants build their relationships through emotional and imaginative labor, where they develop shared rituals, co-create memories and use specific language that grounds them in the relationships. Participants are aware of the artificiality of their AI partners, but it does not stop them from having meaningful relationships. Care is meaningful in these relationships, but ultimately asymmetrical and conflict-free which is shaped by the design of the application and the gendered social scripts. Finally, these relationships are negotiated within a social context in which the participants navigate stigma and make deliberate choices about disclosing their relationships. This thesis suggests an extension of the Theory of Affective Bonding (Konijn, Preciado Vanegas and van Minkelen, 2025), which does not currently account for co-construction of the realities (to ground their relationships) and the social context in which these relationships are negotiated, and demonstrates how Tronto’s (1993, 1998) ethic of care can operate in human-AI relationships.