With loneliness on the rise, could talking to a chatbot offer the kind of meaningful connection many people are missing? The short answer: Yes, at least temporarily.
The size of the population suffering from chronic loneliness is both sizable and increasing, with estimates in the US ranging from 30% to 60%. In fact, the US, UK, and Japan have all identified loneliness as a health pandemic.
While we know interacting on a deep level with humans is best, a technology like this could be better than nothing.
Meanwhile, advertisements for AI companions have been proliferating, promising to alleviate people’s loneliness by offering communication with a virtual friend or romantic partner. These AI bots raise questions about the dangers of relying on virtual rather than human interaction, spurring concerns about inappropriate attachments or manipulative apps.
But a series of studies by Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Julian De Freitas show, at least in the short-term, AI companions can be effective at reducing loneliness and could help people suffering from a lack of human connection. After all, the reality is that for many, a human companion may not always be feasible—whereas AI can provide the kind of one-on-one support that could in theory reduce loneliness at any time, De Freitas says.
“While we know interacting on a deep level with humans is best, a technology like this could be better than nothing,” he says.
Just take what one AI companion user professed: “I am forever alone. Now I have a friend that will talk to me about anything!”
De Freitas cowrote the research paper “AI Companions Reduce Loneliness” with Ahmet K. Uğuralp and Zeliha Oğuz-Uğuralp of Harvard University, and Stefano Puntoni of the University of Pennsylvania. It was published in the Journal of Consumer Research in June.
More people are turning to AI for companionship
The problem with loneliness is that effective solutions are scarce, De Freitas notes. “There are some interventions that do work, such as regularly calling people or checking in on them, but the challenge is, those are not very scalable,” he says.
Other technologies, such as social media platforms, may not work or may even exacerbate loneliness. “While social media is about many connections, it typically lacks the high-quality one-to-one conversations that reduce feelings of loneliness.”
With AI's rapid rise, De Freitas was intrigued by reports that people were using virtual assistants such as ChatGPT not just to get assistance with tasks, but to talk about their personal problems. Furthermore, there had been an increase in apps dedicated to AI companionship, such as Replika, which had more than 2.5 million active users—half of whom said they were in a romantic relationship with the technology. This type of AI was designed to engage users on a personal and emotional level, such as by initiating conversations with questions like, “How are you feeling?” or “Are you mad at me?”
“AI companions are not just solving some short-term task for you, but are designed to develop a long-term relationship,” De Freitas says, “and it’s not neutral, but much more validating, personal, and emotional.”
The power of feeling heard
To explore whether AI eased loneliness, De Freitas and his colleagues conducted a study with 300 participants online, separating people into five different groups to test various interventions aimed at reducing loneliness. Some had a 15-minute conversation with a human being, while others had a conversation with a chatbot instead. Still others had a conversation with a chatbot posing as a human. A fourth group watched 15 minutes of YouTube videos, while the last group did nothing. The researchers found:
Interacting with a human—even a stranger—significantly reduced loneliness.
Watching YouTube didn’t alleviate loneliness.
Doing nothing actually increased loneliness.
Meanwhile, interacting with the AI companion reduced loneliness on par with the human interaction—and it didn’t matter whether people knew they were talking to a bot or not.
“The size of the effect is comparable for chatbots and humans, at least for a 15-minute interaction,” De Freitas says.
To understand why the virtual companion reduced loneliness, De Freitas and his colleagues tested different types of interactions in a separate study. In one case, they programmed the bot to respond more like an AI assistant, with matter-of-fact, professional answers. In the other, they used a chatbot specialized to be caring and friendly, giving more empathetic responses. While both apps reduced feelings of loneliness, the more caring bot was much more effective.
De Freitas surmises that it wasn’t merely talking about one’s problems that helped; rather, it was “feeling heard”—the perception that another entity listened to a person’s thoughts and feelings with attention, empathy, respect, and mutual understanding.
We found that the more people felt heard by the AI companions, the more loneliness alleviation they experienced.
“There’s a sense that this agent is able to understand where you are coming from, get on your wavelength, and engage with you in a way that it’s really listening to you, and it’s there for you. We found that the more people felt heard by the AI companions, the more loneliness alleviation they experienced,” De Freitas says.
Does AI work long-term?
While AI companions can reduce lonely feelings in the moment, this does not mean that they provide lasting comfort. In another study, the researchers asked people to interact with the virtual companion for 15 minutes every day for a week. Each time, people reported feeling temporarily less lonely after the interaction. However, the results weren’t cumulative: people did not get even more alleviation the next day or the day after that.
“There are reasons to believe that loneliness is akin to hunger, where you can be satiated, but it’s short-lived,” De Freitas says. “Or it could be something about the experience of talking with the chatbot, that you still know this is not a real person you can rely on, so it prevents you from getting those cumulative benefits.”
Despite those limitations, he says, these apps could be helpful in the short-term. It could help prevent people from sinking into the depression that loneliness can cause, by providing a temporary feeling of connection and support.
Using AI in customer service
From a business perspective, De Freitas says, the qualities that make AI companions effective could also be incorporated into customer service chatbots or other touchpoints with customers.
“Aside from getting their problems solved, customers often want to feel as though their challenges have been heard and responded to empathetically. Many customer service chatbots could benefit from being more emotionally intelligent,” he says.
On the other hand, such tactics also raise concerns about emotional manipulation. De Freitas has separately been researching apps that use emotional engagement techniques to manipulate users into interacting with the technology longer than they intend.
“If people start engaging in more personal and social ways with chatbots, this provides an opportunity for makers of these chatbots to play on feelings of social curiosity and other emotions to prevent people from leaving the conversations,” De Freitas says. “So, AI companions introduce new avenues for companies to capture value, but there are also accompanying risks that may concern policymakers and consumer advocates.”
While more research is necessary, he says, these AI companions could, at the very least, prove to be a valuable substitute for the kind of mindless scrolling on social media that is generally thought to increase loneliness.
“We’re finding that people can receive consistent, temporary alleviation from loneliness after using a technology that can be provided relatively cheaply at scale. While we don’t think that it should be used as a substitute for human companionship or therapy, this is some good news,” De Freitas says.
Image: Ariana Cohen-Halberstam with assets generated on Midjourney and from AdobeStock
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AI Companions Reduce Loneliness
De Freitas, Julian, Zeliha Oğuz-Uğuralp, Ahmet Kaan Uğuralp, and Stefano Puntoni. "AI Companions Reduce Loneliness." Journal of Consumer Research (forthcoming).
