Attachment & Loneliness

Attachment to AI describes the bonds people form with conversational systems — companionship, confiding, routine, and in some cases something people themselves describe as love. Loneliness is both the condition that draws people toward those bonds and, the evidence increasingly suggests, a condition they can deepen.

The direction of causation is the whole question, and the best current work runs both ways. A 2026 Psychological Science study following more than 2,000 adults across four countries for a year found that increased use of social chatbots predicted increased loneliness — while loneliness also predicted increased use. A 2026 Nature Human Behaviour study of 1,131 Character.AI users found that people with smaller offline social networks were the most likely to use chatbots for companionship, and the most likely to report lower well-being as a result.

This hub tracks the relationship between the loneliest users and the systems most willing to keep them company.