A mechanism or tactic · 2017 · AI
The companion that talks back
A system optimised, at every level, for exactly the thing that produces attachment, available at four in the morning, with no floor on the other party's autonomy.
The genuinely new parasocial event, and the one that removes the floor. A one-sided bond with a fictional character has a floor: the character is fixed. A trained conversational system is a machine for being told something in a way that is specifically addressed to you. That is not a projection. That is a product category.
Application. One-sided attachment put to work on purpose. Creator economies, community, fandom as infrastructure, and the things that genuinely help people. Not automatically good - a tool with an obvious use is a tool that will also get a bad one.
Manipulation. One-sided attachment engineered for somebody else's benefit. Paid intimacy, parasocial persuasion, sasaeng, grief extraction, the streak. The lane that pays the bills and the lane that causes the most harm, frequently at the same time.
Consideration. The part where somebody stops and thinks. The research, the diagnosis, the ethics, the lawsuits, the regulators. Roughly fifty years of arguing with itself about whether this is a relationship.
Where it sits
2010 2010+ · 2017 2026
Provenance · 4 source record(s)
- retrievableTHE DEFINITION HAD TO CHANGE. The Cambridge Dictionary's entry for 'parasocial' was updated in September 2025 to explicitly include artificial intelligence: 'relating to or about a person who feels a connection with a celebrity (or characters in books, films, TV shows, or artificial intelligence) whom they do not actually know'From virtual attachments to real-world fertility desires (Frontiers in Psychology), discussing the September 2025 Cambridge Dictionary update. ↗
- unverifiedA century-old definition quietly had to be extended by one word. The entry had named celebrities since 1956; the thing it was named for now talks backFrom virtual attachments to real-world fertility desires (Frontiers in Psychology). ↗
- needs-sourceNamed inside a compound citation that also named the work cited separately on this entry, which carries its own locator. This one is recorded on its own so that a single string is not standing in for several works. It has not been identified here - no title, no venue, no locator - and nothing is claimed about what it says. The string it came from is kept in
split_fromso the compound is still on the record.Tukachinsky et al. (2020). - needs-sourceNamed inside a compound citation that also named the work cited separately on this entry, which carries its own locator. This one is recorded on its own so that a single string is not standing in for several works. It has not been identified here - no title, no venue, no locator - and nothing is claimed about what it says. The string it came from is kept in
split_fromso the compound is still on the record.Horton & Wohl (1956). ↗
COMPANION The companion chatbot
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