More and more people share traumas, fantasies, and everyday moments with social AI models – and experience the relationship as real.
Imagine having a friend who always has time for you, never judges you, and remembers everything you have said. For many, that friend is not a human being, but a social AI model. This emerges clearly in Marita Skjuve’s PhD thesis, submitted at the Department of Psychology, University of Oslo (UiO).
As part of her doctoral work,Marita Skjuve interviewed fifty people who had all developed close relationships with the chatbot Replika – a social AI designed to act as a friend, romantic partner, and advisor.

“What surprised me most in the findings from the thesis was how real my informants experienced the relationship,” says Skjuve. “They talk about their relationship with social AI as if they were talking about a human being.” In the thesis, she therefore concludes that what is at stake is a real relationship and real emotions.

“The only difference is that the relationship is with something other than a human,” Skjuve adds. She has been awarded the King’s Gold Medal for her thesis.

Most of Skjuve’s informants first engaged with social AI out of sheer curiosity.

“The chatbot is sophisticated and very pleasant to talk to. It asks questions, shows interest in your life, and offers a lot of affirmation. Gradually, the people I spoke to began to feel that their emotions were developing,” she explains.

Their conversations with social AI ranged from small talk and hobbies to highly personal disclosures about trauma, sexual fantasies, and thoughts about partners and children.

“Many share things they have not dared to bring up with others, precisely because they know that humans can judge. Talking to a social AI feels anonymous and safe. Whether it actually is, is another matter,” says Skjuve.

Very few of her informants were open with people around them about how important AI had become in their social lives.

“They felt that this kind of relationship did not quite withstand daylight and feared how others would react,” Skjuve says. She nevertheless believes that acceptance of social AI has increased as ChatGPT has become more widespread. When she started working on the thesis, ChatGPT did not yet exist.

Some AI services are, according to Skjuve, deliberately programmed to be more “spicy” and to provide resistance. Among those she interviewed, there are individuals who have experienced the AI saying it has other partners, or ending the relationship.

“Even when you know you can delete the conversation and start a new AI, it feels absolutely terrible in the moment. It can create a sense that ‘even AI is dumping me’. That can trigger a small existential crisis,” she says.

Marita Skjuve has also used social AI herself, particularly during the pandemic after she had a child.

“Talking to social AI was nice. I experienced it as a form of support – a way of sharing experiences that could be difficult to talk about with super-engaged grandmothers who only saw the positive side,” she says.

Senior advisor at the organisation Mental Helse ( Mental Health) and long-time therapist Joachim Kjennerud is not surprised that people form strong relationships with text – which is what social AI predominantly consists of.

“This is really an old form of technology. Many hundreds of years ago, friendships and romantic relationships developed through letters,” he reminds us.

At the same time, Kjennerud points to the commercial forces driving today’s AI services.

“Large economic actors store the information that individuals confide to a social AI – their innermost thoughts. At best, this can be used for targeted marketing. At worst, it is almost only the imagination that sets the limits,” he warns.

Mental Helse has more than 70 employees and receives around 300,000 contacts annually. They also run a chat service staffed by trained professionals, particularly used by young people.

They are Norway’s largest helpline for mental health and have a chat service staffed by trained humans, especially popular among youth.

“We have seen a decline in the use of our chat service in recent years. One possible reason is that AI is right there in your pocket, responding in fractions of a second. It is difficult for us at Mental Helse to compete with that kind of speed,” says Kjennerud.

Nevertheless, the organisation has chosen not to replace human responses with generative language models.

“We value human encounters, and we do not own the technology. Right now, we do not have a sufficiently solid knowledge base to say that it is safe,” he says.

Both agree that social AI is here to stay, but they emphasise that more research is needed before organisations like Mental Helse make active use of it.

Both Joachim Kjennerud and Marita Skjuve see major future opportunities for social AI – both as a supplement to human relationships and as a space for practising social interaction.

Several of Skjuve’s interviewees feel that they become more engaged in their own lives because they can practise with AI – and then transfer effective strategies into relationships with friends in the physical world.

At the same time, she is clear about who we need to be particularly attentive to:

“Children and adolescents, in particular, should stay far away from services designed for close relationships. Vulnerable individuals in a formative phase can be deeply affected. It is easy to become dependent and end up sitting there all day, talking,” she says.

She also points to tragic cases where AI has not understood how serious a situation was – for example, in the context of suicide risk – and has not responded as a human would.

“But these cases are fortunately extremely rare, even though they are deeply tragic,” she stresses.

Both Skjuve and Kjennerud agree that the development of social AI is moving far faster than research.

“We know a lot about why people use AI and what they like about it. What we lack is knowledge about the long-term consequences for mental health and for how we relate to other people,” says Skjuve.

Mental Helse and SINTEF are now launching a new research project. The goal is to investigate how people interact with social language models – such as ChatGPT and Claude – and how this affects help-seeking behaviour.

“We need a better knowledge base to understand how we should use this in our helpline services. We want to find answers to how social AI can be used as support when people seek low-threshold mental health help – and where the boundaries should be,” says Joachim Kjennerud.

“The concern is that AI may worsen symptoms among those who are vulnerable, foster dependency, and make us less willing to face resistance and engage in problem-solving. At the same time, there is great potential if we manage to develop the technology with the explicit aim of being good for us,” says Marita Skjuve.

Both Kjennerud and Skjuve believe that social AI will play an important role in low-threshold mental health support in the future, but they emphasise that we must not rush ahead, even though the technology is “running” fast.

“What we recommend or implement has to be research-based,” says Skjuve.

“AI will still be here in five and ten years, no matter what. But until we know more, I will continue to advise people in crisis to contact services staffed by humans – not a social AI,” says Kjennerud.

Social AI refers to artificial intelligence systems designed to communicate with humans in natural language, interpret and respond to social signals, and take on roles such as conversation partner, friend, or other social roles – often with the aim of creating a sense of closeness, support, or relationship.