This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Attachment is the term psychologists use for the most significant relationships that hold people's lives together. But what makes an attachment relationship different from all others?
According to the pioneering American–Canadian developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth, it must meet the following six conditions. The relationship must persist over time, and it must have been formed with a particular subject who cannot be replaced. The relationship must be emotionally significant, involve the desire to remain close to them and cause distress at involuntary separation.
Finally, when threatened, the person must seek security and comfort in their relationship with that subject. The first five conditions describe any lasting affectionate bond, such as a close friendship. Only the sixth turns it into an attachment bond specifically.
Simply liking someone, feeling close to them or spending hours together isn't enough to create an attachment relationship. Interestingly, though, nothing in these six conditions specifies a human on the other side. This was already noticed long before the emergence of AI chatbots with the power to converse.
Deities, pets and objects (ranging from children's blankets and stuffed animals to cherished household items and even phones and computers) have all been found to supply security and comfort when someone is feeling distressed. Today, AI companion apps are commonly sold on the promise of lasting and close relationships. Many of their users describe feeling real grief when an app is updated or withdrawn.
But do such experiences meet the narrow definition of attachment? The honest answer is: We don't really know yet. Research on human–AI relationships has so far recorded users' feelings about chatbots, their frequency of use and their reactions to chatbot withdrawal.
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