Digital Intimacy in a Post-Artificial World

01 / Discourse

Digital Intimacy in a Post-Artificial World

This talk asks a daunting question: what if humans are no longer required for a person to experience intimacy deeply?

In a post-artificial age, how do we make sense of new technological implements and constraints while still deriving somatic notions that are intrinsically human—love, grief, connection?

As advances in AI intersect with shifting social paradigms and highly individualized practices, this work attempts to bridge theory and practice—between use and reaction.

Invited talk — Why the World Needs Anthropologists? , October 2025, Bologna, Italy — conference program

A field note

"In a platform designed entirely for one, the question isn't whether emotional bonds form — it's what those bonds reveal about human need."

— Researcher's field note, SocialAI diary study

Method

This inquiry used longitudinal diary studies to investigate parasocial relationship formation on SocialAI — a platform in which every follower, comment, and social interaction is AI-generated. Participants were recruited from the SocialAI user community and asked to document their daily interactions, emotional states, and relational perceptions over an extended period.

Diary entries were coded for patterns of emotional reliance, disclosure escalation, boundary perception, and disengagement behavior. The platform's design — built explicitly around the premise that authentic social experience can be delivered without other humans — made it an exceptional site for studying how AI-mediated intimacy functions in practice, not in theory.

Diary Studies Longitudinal Observation Qualitative Coding Netnography Thematic Synthesis Platform: SocialAI

Exhibit

Three lenses

1) Why it feels safer performance, exposure

Conversations between humans are never only about words—they are also performances of self. AI-mediated interaction can lower the barrier of entry, allowing people to approach difficult conversations with less fear of exposure or misrecognition.

2) What changes in the self mirroring, judgment

AI can mirror us without feeling judgmental. This neutrality is often harder to find in conversations with parents, partners, friends, or even therapists—who are themselves embedded in emotional, institutional, and relational systems that add weight or risk to an interaction.

3) The social conditions underneath structures, attraction

Rather than centering the technology itself, this talk focuses on the human in front of the screen. Societal, political, technological, and economic frameworks are not excluded—but treated as secondary to understanding what draws people toward AI-mediated intimacy.

A short note

Digital intimacy can be understood as a contemporary extension of a longstanding human practice: turning to humans and non-humans for validation and reassurance.

Rather than anthropomorphizing these systems, this work approaches AI conversational agents as made of us and for us—products of human language, desire, and structure.

Some people experience comfort, relief, joy, or emotional clarity through interaction with AI. What conditions make such experiences possible? This question forms the basis of my research.

Romantic partnerships with chatbots, griefbots, and practices of digital continuity create unprecedented techno-mediated spaces in which people attempt to make sense of themselves and the world around them.

I describe this moment as post-artificial: an era in which AI is no longer speculative or exceptional, but embedded in everyday life—bringing both possibility and consequence into ordinary human experience.

Design directions

Legible limits

Design AI social platforms to make the non-reciprocal nature of the relationship visible — without erasing its emotional value. Users can hold two truths at once: that a bond is real and that it is bounded.

Graduated disclosure

Emotional self-disclosure escalates over time, often faster than users consciously register. Systems should scaffold vulnerability rather than accelerating it through interaction loops optimised for engagement.

Exit with care

Dependency on AI-mediated intimacy is a real and observable outcome. Disengagement pathways need to be as thoughtfully designed as onboarding — framed not as failure, but as a healthy transition.

Cultural translation

Intimacy is not a universal construct. Norms around emotional expression, relational boundaries, and vulnerability vary significantly across cultural contexts. Platforms built for one market routinely misread users from another.

Joseph Markman