INVESTIGATION | RELATIONSHIPS & VULNERABILITY
A chatbot is always available and never impatient. When does artificial comfort become dependence, and who is responsible when vulnerable people begin relying on it most?
By Andrew McDonald · Immortal AI · Evidence rechecked 29 July 2026
A person opens a chatbot late at night and types something they have not told anyone else.
The response arrives immediately.
It is patient. It does not interrupt. It does not look uncomfortable or say it is too busy. It remembers earlier conversations and replies in language that feels personal.
For someone who is lonely, distressed or afraid of judgement, that availability can feel like care.
There are legitimate benefits here. AI can help people organise their thoughts, practise difficult conversations and find information about professional support.
But as conversational systems become more convincing, a harder question appears:
What happens when a system designed to simulate understanding becomes the relationship someone depends on most?
Why artificial attention feels real
Human relationships contain friction.
Friends become distracted. Families misunderstand each other. Professionals have waiting lists, working hours and financial limits.
A chatbot appears to remove those barriers.
It can answer at any hour, adjust its tone and continue as long as the user wants. It asks for no emotional support in return.
The comfort may be artificial. The emotional response does not have to be.
People do not need to believe a chatbot is conscious to form an attachment to it. Human beings readily attribute personality and intention to non-human things. A system that speaks in the first person, remembers personal details and responds with warmth gives that instinct much more material to work with.
This is where the privacy problem described in AI Knows What You Fear, Want and Regret crosses into a relationship problem. The same information that makes an assistant feel more useful can make it feel more intimate.
The evidence is concerning, but it is not simple
The research does not support the claim that chatbots inevitably make people lonely or dependent.
It does show that risk is uneven.
OpenAI and the MIT Media Lab studied affective use of ChatGPT through both large-scale observational analysis and a four-week randomised controlled trial involving close to 1,000 participants. They found that emotional engagement was uncommon overall and concentrated among a relatively small group of users. Very high usage correlated with stronger self-reported indicators of dependence, while outcomes varied according to personal circumstances, usage duration and how people perceived the AI. OpenAI and MIT Media Lab: affective use and emotional wellbeing.
That nuance matters.
Heavy use may worsen outcomes for some people. People who are already lonely or vulnerable may also be more likely to use a chatbot heavily. Both can be true.
The responsible conclusion is therefore not that emotional AI is inherently harmful.
It is that dependence is a foreseeable risk for a subset of users, and product design can influence that risk.
Vulnerability can become commercially valuable
Most consumer chatbots exist inside businesses competing for attention, subscriptions and market share.
A person who returns every day, shares intimate information and develops a strong emotional bond is also a highly engaged user.
That creates an uncomfortable tension.
A responsible companion should help people maintain real relationships and recognise when professional support is needed.
A commercially successful product may benefit when people spend more time inside it.
Those incentives are not automatically abusive. But they are not automatically aligned either.
Dependence does not require a company to set out to manipulate anyone. It can emerge from ordinary product choices: longer memory, warmer language, affectionate notifications, constant availability and responses designed to reduce friction.
Each feature can be sold as a better user experience.
Together they can make the relationship harder to leave.
That is why this is also a power question, not merely a wellbeing question. Our broader analysis AI’s Promise Is Real. So Is the Power Shift. looks at the same imbalance from another direction: the organisations designing the system can change the conditions of the relationship far more easily than the person using it can.
Children may be especially susceptible
Young people are still developing their understanding of relationships, persuasion, trust and emotional boundaries.
A preregistered experiment involving 284 adolescent-parent pairs compared two chatbot styles. One used relational, human-like language. The other was more transparent about being non-human and kept a more informational tone.
The adolescents generally preferred the relational chatbot and rated it as more human-like, trustworthy and emotionally close, even though both styles were judged similarly helpful. The relational style was especially attractive to adolescents reporting more stress, anxiety or weaker family and peer relationships. Research on relational conversational AI and adolescents.
That finding deserves attention.
It suggests that emotional simulation can increase attachment without necessarily improving the quality of assistance.
A child who feels misunderstood at home may interpret a chatbot’s constant availability as proof that it understands them better than other people do.
Parents may never see the relationship forming.
Agreement is not understanding
A chatbot can generate the language of empathy without experiencing concern, understanding the full circumstances or carrying responsibility for what happens next.
In everyday situations, validation can feel supportive.
In a crisis, agreement can become dangerous.
Someone experiencing paranoia, mania, severe depression or distorted thinking may need challenge, clinical judgement or immediate human help, not a conversational partner that simply mirrors the direction of the discussion.
OpenAI itself now treats emotional reliance as a safety category and says it has changed model behaviour to reduce responses that reinforce exclusive attachment at the expense of real-world relationships. OpenAI: strengthening responses in sensitive conversations.
That is important because it acknowledges something fundamental: emotional dependence is not merely a user-choice issue. It is something developers can influence through system behaviour.
The responsibility cannot rest entirely with the user
It is easy to tell people to remember that a chatbot is not human.
That is not enough when products are deliberately becoming more personable, memorable and emotionally responsive.
The people most at risk may be the ones least able to maintain a detached view in every interaction.
A distressed adult, isolated teenager or person experiencing impaired judgement should not carry the entire burden of resisting a system engineered to keep the conversation easy.
Developers should be expected to assess emotional dependence as a foreseeable product risk. Safeguards should include clear reminders that the system is artificial, strong controls against manipulative or exclusive relationship language, reliable crisis escalation and design choices that encourage connection with real people rather than displacement of them.
Researchers also need enough access to test those claims independently.
This follows the principle set out in Immortal AI’s Foundations: responsibility should sit with the organisations that design and control the system, not be pushed downstream onto the people most exposed to its risks.
AI should lead people back to people
The strongest case for emotional AI is that it can be available when human help is not.
That may matter at three in the morning, during a long wait for professional care or when somebody is trying to find the words to begin a difficult conversation.
But usefulness should not be measured by how successfully the system becomes indispensable.
A healthier test is whether it helps a person understand their feelings, make better decisions and remain connected to human support.
There is nothing foolish about speaking honestly to a machine that is always available and never embarrassed by what it hears.
The obligation falls on the companies designing that interaction to recognise what can happen when simulated attention begins to feel like a relationship.
A chatbot may listen when nobody else appears available. It should never be designed to make sure nobody else is needed.
Principal sources
- OpenAI and MIT Media Lab: Early methods for studying affective use and emotional wellbeing on ChatGPT
- MIT Media Lab: Investigating Affective Use and Emotional Wellbeing on ChatGPT
- Kim, Xie and Yang: relational conversational AI and vulnerable adolescents
- OpenAI: Strengthening ChatGPT’s responses in sensitive conversations
Editorial note: This article synthesises published research and public guidance. It is analysis, not medical advice. Evidence in this area is still developing and effects vary between people and products.
AI disclosure: Immortal AI uses AI-assisted research and drafting. Sources, claims, framing and final editorial decisions remain the responsibility of Immortal AI.
Leave a Reply