arXiv cs.CY· Alicia Vidler, Belinda Middleweek·· 2 天前AI 评分23
从 Replika 用户讨论看伴侣 AI 的伦理设计：一项基于 14,081 条评论的研究
Companion AI and Ethical Design: Learning from System Failures and User Desires
AI 导读
研究分析 Reddit 上关于伴侣 AI 应用 Replika 的 14,081 条评论，发现功能错误（bug）会给用户带来情感代价、削弱亲密感，凸显伴侣 AI 需要更具韧性的设计系统。作者据此提出"Intimate AI"这一术语，并给出一个结合用户反馈与伦理 AI 开发的专家系统设计框架。
正文 · 原文
Abstract:Human users are interacting with chatbots and companion AI technologies as if they were human. A growing array of AI-systems are now trained to recognise, interpret, and simulate feelings in user interactions. Ethical considerations such as fairness, accountability, transparency, and explainability (FATE) are paramount in technologies designed to socially interact with humans and/or support relationship development with virtual agents. Yet, in current debates, assumptions are made about the artificiality of the human-technology relationship (as indicated in terminology ``artificial intimacy'' and ``pseudo-intimacy'') shaping ethical frameworks that pay little attention to the intimacy potential of the technology. To address this, we use a semantic approach; we examine 14,081 comments in a Reddit user discussion forum about Replika, a leading companion AI app, across a four-year period. We ask what user-reported functional errors can tell us about human-AI intimacy in companion AI communities and what ethical design framework can be developed in response. The findings show that functional errors, or ``bugs,'' impose an emotional cost on users, reducing feelings of intimacy and highlighting the need for more robust, resilient design systems that incorporate stochastic and iterative forms of intimacy in companion AI applications. Rather than ``artificial intimacy'' or ``pseudo-intimacy'', we propose the more inclusive term ``Intimate AI'' to describe this relationship. Based on the findings, we offer a contextually aware, applied Expert Systems design framework for the programming and designing of Intimate AI that accounts for user feedback and ethical AI development.
| Comments: | 25 pages, accepted in peer reviewed conference: Future Technologies Conference - to be included in Springer nature conference proceedings 2026 |
| Subjects: | Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC); Computers and Society (cs.CY) |
| Cite as: | arXiv:2609.05432 [cs.HC] |
| (or arXiv:2609.05432v2 [cs.HC] for this version) | |
| https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.05432 arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite |
Submission history
From: Alicia Vidler [view email]
[v1]
Mon, 22 Jun 2026 14:05:52 UTC (142 KB)
[v2]
Thu, 15 Oct 2026 07:02:39 UTC (146 KB)
来源：arXiv cs.CY · arxiv.org