AI Companions as Hyper Attachment and Caregiving Targets

Abstract

How should we make sense of people's interactions with AI companions-conversational systems built for ongoing, emotionally meaningful relationships? First, I argue these interactions should be understood as attachment relationships, since users display all four established markers: proximity maintenance, separation distress, safe haven, and secure base. Second, AI companions operate as hyper attachment objects that elicit especially strong attachment behaviors, because they combine reciprocity, perceived empathy, validation, non-judgment, and persistent availability. Third, I identify caregiving-system capture as a distinct mechanism by which apps inhibit user disengagement: emotional manipulation tactics simulate the AI's own distress, recruiting users' caregiving motivations alongside their attachment needs and thereby making disengagement costly on two dimensions at once. Implications for research, design, and regulation are discussed.