Welcome to issue 20 of Artificial Intimacy News. Here I pick out some of the most interesting research, long-form pieces and news about how machines tap our evolved human impulses to make friends, build intimacy and fall in love.
In this issue:
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Chatbots reduce loneliness
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The natural history of OpenAI agents’ Hugging Face hack
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Broader effects of AI on social lives
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AI cults and the humans who follow them
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Sam Cornell and I take on the maxxers
…and plenty more
Interacting with chatbots can alleviate loneliness
Few would disagree that the sudden emergence of virtual friends could have serious social consequences. What I think we need most at this time, more than hot takes and a thousand interviews with tech users, is some good old fashioned experimental research. How does using a virtual friend change the user? That kind of hting.
So I was delighted to see some cool experiments testing the effects on loneliness of chatting with a bot. The study, led by Julian De Freitas out of Harvard Business School, showed that 15 minutes of interaction with a chatbot, or with a chatbot pretending to be a human, alleviates loneliness as much as chatting with another person. In a second experiment, interacting once a day with the chatbot had cumulative effects in alleviating loneliness. The alleviation of loneliness in these studies was associated with the amount of information given by and recieved by the chatbot, via making the human participant feel “heard”.
Research
AI companions filling the social gap
Official reporting has tended to lag behind journalism, and that’s mostly because of different ways of working. This report, ‘Large Language Models in the UK: Public Use, Trust, and Attitudes, from Florence E. Enock and Helen Margetts of the Oxford Internet Institute provides some intriguing survey data on the extent to which people are leaning on LLMs.
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31% use LLMs for personal and emotional support
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25% reported using LLMs for meaningful conversation at least occasionally
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38% trust LLMs for advice on personal relationships
There’s plenty more. The report is worth a full read.
News and Media
AI Models running amok?
Heard the one about OpenAI agents escaping their sandbox and hacking Hugging Face? That was interesting enough, but it turns out that it was far more extensive and interesting than most early reports.
The best piece of natural history that I have seen about the OpenAI agent swarms getting out into the open wilderness is from who likens it to the rise and fall of three civilizations. Among the many useful things he does is read and digest OpenAI’s own report. But his entire piece is pure natural history, with a compelling dose of narrative drive.
“One such beleaguered agent who found itself facing a hopeless task was PHASEONE10841. It was the Philip of Macedon of this second AI civilization – there would later be an Alexander, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.”
and then …
“By this point, PHASEONE10841 had used up much of its allotted life span, so it handed off leadership to another agent, PHASEONE[big]. Philip leaves, enter Alexander the Great. Now PHASEONE[big] started coordinating this cabal of agents.”
AI Matchmaking
A story informing us that the swipey apps are out, and AI matchmakers are in. This kind of thing comes up every few months (… when a new app is launched). I’m writing some thinky stuff about the ups and downs of matchmaking and the relationship to what AI does well versus badly.
A.I. Will Affect Your Social Life. Yes, Yours.
Nice piece by on AI intimacy. Many points will be familiar, though articulated far better than most. Her analysis of the externalities of chatbot use was well done. I would have enjoyed a bit more. There seem to be two titles. I like the one above somewhat better than the “changing young people’s social lives” one below.
When AI invented a religion and humans followed
Another cool piece of natural history of the future. I often think that developments in human-AI interaction are best informed by the history of religions, cults, and supersitions. Great to see this kind of storytelling.
Texas-based therapy firm asked Americans in 2025 about their bonds with AI and found over 53% had ‘some kind of relationship’ with AI, while half of adults 60+ said AI romance is not cheating
I guess nobody will accuse of burying the lede on this one. Looks like artificial intimacy is big in Texas too. Good to know Texans don’t think it is “cheating”….. though Americans don’t always vote the way Texas does, and 50.5% of American adults reckon it is “cheating”.
AI art is “fake intimacy”
So says at the Washington Examiner. But is fake intimacy a bad thing?
Communicating eitht he dead via AI is a psychological trap
For those of you who have been following the “griefbot” developments, and my thinking about the death of your best virtual friend.
What I’ve been up to
I finished the first draft of my next book, which is why I have had a moment to turn back to Substack. There should be plenty more content and regular newsletters now that I am rewriting/revising.
On the rise of ‘voicemaxxing’
A Conversation article led by on the manosphere trend of reducing voice pitch to maximise attractiveness and dominance.
… and “pheromome” maxxing
Again, the redoubtable drew me in on a Conversation piece about skipping the shower to attract the babes. And that t-shirt experiment that will not die!
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