Welcome to Episode 2 for our exclusive Series 1 on companion chatbots.
In this episode, you'll hear all about the research and news (59:00) on companion chatbots. We’ll cover early research in psychology, human-computer interaction, and business. Then, you’ll get a sense of some of the recent news releases on human-chatbot relationships - like Meta’s regulatory report, the man who ~thought~ he was going to visit a real-life person, this weird new companion called “Friend” (it’s like an Airtag around your neck - but also surveillance - but your friend?), and more.
In the next episodes in this series, you'll hear from two guest speakers - one who will give you a deep dive on griefbots (what even are those??), and another who will talk about anthropomorphism (thinking these things are humanlike) and even - drumroll - consciousness!
In the last episode, we covered: What are companion chatbots? Why do people use them? What are the most popular companion chatbots out there, and what are some of the benefits and risks of having relationships with artificial intelligence agents?
This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep.
Rose and Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. You can learn more about us at ourliveswithbots.com.
Links to the research and articles we covered:
[Research]
Xie & Pentina (2022) Attachment Theory as a Framework to Understand Relationships with Social Chatbots: A Case Study of Replika
Guingrich & Graziano (2025) Chatbots as Social Companions: How People Perceive Consciousness, Human Likeness, and Social Health Benefits in Machines
Guingrich & Graziano (2024) Ascribing consciousness to artificial intelligence: human-AI interaction and its carry-over effects on human-human interaction
Maples et al. (2024) Loneliness and suicide mitigation for students using GPT3-enabled chatbots
De Freitas et al. (2025) AI Companions Reduce Loneliness - open-access preprint
[News]