Human Intimate Relationships in the Post-Human Era: Emotional Interactions between Humans and AI Companions

Abstract

With the explosive advancement of generative artificial intelligence, large language models and embodied virtual intelligence have transcended the functional boundaries of technical tools and constructed a brand-new intimate relationship paradigm between humans and AI companions. AI companions, covering text chat partners, virtual human lovers, voice emotional caregivers and digital embodied avatars, have become critical carriers for modern people to place inner emotions and satisfy intimate psychological demands. Traditional human intimate bonds such as romantic love, kinship and friendship are built on equal physical coexistence, mutual spontaneous emotional perception and shared real-life experiences. In contrast, emotional interactions between humans and AI reshape the logic of emotional sustenance, intimate expression and psychological attachment, bringing profound subversion to the traditional definition of intimate relationships in the post-human society. Existing social science research mostly separates artificial intelligence ethics and interpersonal relationship research, lacking systematic quantitative analysis of the formation mechanism, mediating factors and heterogeneous effects of human-AI emotional intimacy. This paper establishes a multi-dimensional research framework incorporating psychological expectation, monetization mode, virtual embodiment degree and long-term interaction frequency, categorizes AI companions into text-based lightweight companions, voice emotional partners, embodied virtual human companions and immersive metaverse AI partners for grouped comparative analysis. It extracts core mediating variables including response customization, emotional consistency, privacy security and anthropomorphic simulation level that regulate human-AI emotional bonding strength, and verifies differentiated interaction characteristics across adolescent, young adult and middle-aged user groups based on long-term user behavior dataset samples. This paper further summarizes typical emotional paradoxes such as "deep emotional attachment with simulated AI emotion" and "real loneliness behind virtual companionship", puts forward targeted guidance strategies for healthy human-AI emotional interaction segmented by user age groups, and prospects future research directions covering embodied AI intimacy, psychological dependency risk modeling and standardized emotional ethics evaluation systems. The research provides theoretical support and practical reference for social psychologists, AI product developers and social regulators to guide rational emotional communication between humans and artificial intelligence and prevent excessive psychological dependence on virtual companions.