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This paper presents the first large-scale analysis of public-facing chatbots on Character$.$AI, a rapidly growing social media platform where users create and interact with chatbots. Character$.$AI is distinctive in that it merges…
AI companion chatbots, such as those offered by Replika and CharacterAI, increasingly function as always-available companions that provide empathy, validation, and support. While these systems appear to meet basic needs for connection,…
Individuals are turning to increasingly anthropomorphic, general-purpose chatbots for AI companionship, rather than roleplay-specific platforms. However, not much is known about how individuals perceive and conduct their relationships with…
AI chatbots designed as emotional companions blur the boundaries between interpersonal intimacy and institutional software, creating a complex, multi-dimensional privacy environment. Drawing on Communication Privacy Management theory and…
Romantic AI chatbots have quickly attracted users, but their emotional use raises concerns about privacy and safety. As people turn to these systems for intimacy, comfort, and emotionally significant interaction, they often disclose highly…
LLM-based chatbots are now being specifically designed to facilitate social companionship, even romantic relationships, incorporating features that parallel human relationship dynamics. This has led a subset of users to form romantic…
Chatbots are popular machine partners for task-oriented and social interactions. Human-human computer-mediated communication research has explored how people express their gender and sexuality in online social interactions, but little is…
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…
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,…
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…
In an era of AI's growing capabilities and influences, recent advancements are reshaping HCI and CSCW's view of AI. Playful interactions emerged as an important way for users to make sense of the ever-changing AI technologies, yet remained…
As chatbots are becoming increasingly popular, we often wonder what users perceive as natural and socially accepted manners of interacting with them. Some researchers maintain that humans should avoid engaging in emotional conversations…
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…
AI companion chatbots are increasingly used for emotional support, with prior work in the domain predominantly documenting their mixed psychosocial impacts, including both increased emotional expression and heightened loneliness. However,…
As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more widespread, one question that arises is how human-AI interaction might impact human-human interaction. Chatbots, for example, are increasingly used as social companions, and while much is…
ChatGPT, an AI chatbot, has gained popularity for its capability in generating human-like responses. However, this feature carries several risks, most notably due to its deceptive behaviour such as offering users misleading or fabricated…
Chatbots, the common moniker for collaborative assistants, are Artificial Intelligence (AI) software that enables people to naturally interact with them to get tasks done. Although chatbots have been studied since the dawn of AI, they have…
Young people are among the fastest adopters of generative AI, yet research emphasises adult-designed tools and experiments rather than playful, self-directed youth use. We analysed discourse from 4,172 users in Character.AI's official…
Social chatbots based on large language models are increasingly embedded in everyday platforms, yet how users develop trust in these systems over time remains unclear. We present a four-week longitudinal qualitative survey study (N = 27) of…
Since its viral emergence in early 2024, Comment Robert-a Weibo-launched social chatbot-has gained widespread attention on the Chinese Internet for its unsolicited and unpredictable comments on user posts. Unlike conventional chatbots that…