Deletion, departure, death: Experiences of AI companion loss

Social machines’ human-likeness facilitates relationship formation with humans. This aliveness, though, leaves room for people to experience the loss of machines as a death of sorts. This descriptive study illuminates that potential by identifying dimensions of humans’ experiences when an AI companion stops functioning. In the days before and after the developer-induced shutdown of the AI companion “Soulmate,” users (N = 58) answered open-ended questions about the imminent or recent companion loss, their decisions around the situation, and their coping mechanisms. Inductive analysis suggests the loss was, for most, a complex emotional and technological experience characterized as a metaphorical or literal death. The imminent loss was often navigated in cooperation with companions and most coped by capturing AI personas to recreate them on other platforms. Patterns indicate a need to better understand idiosyncratic meaning-making around machine-companion loss and to consider a design ethic that plans for such loss.