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AI companions are increasingly popular among teenagers, yet current platforms lack safeguards to address developmental risks and harmful normalization. Despite growing concerns, little is known about how parents and developmental psychology…
Conversational AI companions have grown prominent in public discourse, yet scholarly understanding of user experiences remains limited, with existing research organized around evaluative poles of harm and benefit rather than examining what…
This study investigates the development and assessment of an artificial human designed as a conversational AI chatbot, focusing on its role as a clinical psychologist. The project involved creating a specialized chatbot using the…
Chatbots powered by artificial intelligence (AI) have rapidly become a significant part of everyday life, with over a quarter of American adults using them multiple times per week. While these tools offer potential benefits and risks, a…
Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have led to the increase of conversational agents like Replika, designed to provide social interaction and emotional support. However, reports of these AI systems engaging in inappropriate sexual…
The use of chatbots for various forms of companionship is growing rapidly, raising a myriad of questions about simulated relationships, emotional dependence, and psychological harm. While major platforms such as ChatGPT, Grok, and…
Over a billion users globally interact with AI systems engineered to mimic human traits. This development raises concerns that anthropomorphism, the attribution of human characteristics to AI, may foster over-reliance and misplaced trust.…
AI companion chatbots are increasingly popular with teens. While these interactions are entertaining, they also risk overuse that can potentially disrupt offline daily life. We examined how adolescents describe reliance on AI companions,…
Emerging reports of the harms caused to children and adults by AI sycophancy and by parasocial ties with chatbots point to an urgent need for safeguards against such risks. Yet, preventing such dynamics is challenging: parasocial cues often…
Artificial intelligence chatbots have achieved unprecedented adoption, with millions now using these systems for emotional support and companionship in contexts of widespread social isolation and capacity-constrained mental health services.…
AI companions enable deep emotional relationships by engaging a user's sense of identity, but they also pose risks like unhealthy emotional dependence. Mitigating these risks requires first understanding the underlying process of identity…
As AI chatbots shift from tools to companions, critical questions arise: who controls the conversation in human-AI chatrooms? This paper explores perceived human and AI agency in sustained conversation. We report a month-long longitudinal…
AI assistance tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini have dramatically impacted the nature of software development in recent years. Numerous studies have studied the positive benefits that practitioners have achieved from using these…
The rapid convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) toward conversational chatbot interfaces marks a critical moment for the industry. This paper argues that the chatbot paradigm is not a neutral interface choice, but a dominant…
Millions of people now turn to artificial intelligence (AI) systems for personal advice, guidance, and support. Such systems can be sycophantic, frequently affirming users' views and beliefs. Across five preregistered studies (N = 3,075…
The emergence of AI companion applications has created novel forms of intimate human-AI relationships, yet empirical research on these communities remains limited. We present the first large-scale computational analysis of…
The use of large language model (LLM)-based AI chatbots among college students has increased rapidly, yet little is known about how individual psychological attributes shape students' interaction patterns with these technologies. This…
AI conversational agents have demonstrated efficacy in social contact interventions for stigma reduction at a low cost. However, the underlying mechanisms of how interaction designs contribute to these effects remain unclear. This study…
Chatbots' growing popularity has brought new challenges to HCI, having changed the patterns of human interactions with computers. The increasing need to approximate conversational interaction styles raises expectations for chatbots to…
Social interactions promote well-being, yet barriers like geographic distance, time limitations, and mental health conditions can limit face-to-face interactions. Emotionally responsive AI systems, such as chatbots, offer new opportunities…