Can consumers form especially deep emotional bonds with AI and be vested in AI identities over time? We leverage a natural app-update event at Replika AI, a popular US-based AI companion, to shed light on these questions. We find that, after the app removed its erotic role play (ERP) feature, preventing intimate interactions between consumers and chatbots that were previously possible, this event triggered perceptions in customers that their AI companion's identity had discontinued. This in turn predicted negative consumer welfare and marketing outcomes related to loss, including mourning the loss, and devaluing the "new" AI relative to the "original". Experimental evidence confirms these findings. Further experiments find that AI companions users feel closer to their AI companion than even their best human friend, and mourn a loss of their AI companion more than a loss of various other inanimate products. In short, consumers are forming human-level relationships with AI companions; disruptions to these relationships trigger real patterns of mourning as well as devaluation of the offering; and the degree of mourning and devaluation are explained by perceived discontinuity in the AIs identity. Our results illustrate that relationships with AI are truly personal, creating unique benefits and risks for consumers and firms alike.

翻译：消费者能否与人工智能形成特别深厚的情感纽带，并长期投入于AI身份？我们利用美国热门AI伴侣应用Replika AI的一次自然应用更新事件来探讨这些问题。研究发现，当该应用移除其情色角色扮演（ERP）功能，导致消费者与聊天机器人之间先前可能的亲密互动被阻断后，该事件引发了用户对其AI伴侣身份连续性的中断感知。这种感知进而引发了与丧失相关的负面消费者福祉及营销结果，包括对丧失的哀悼，以及对"新"AI相较于"原版"AI的价值贬损。实验证据证实了这些发现。进一步实验表明，AI伴侣用户感觉与AI伴侣的亲密程度甚至超过其最好的人类朋友，且对AI伴侣丧失的哀悼程度高于对其他各类无生命产品的丧失。简言之，消费者正在与AI伴侣建立类人际关系；对此类关系的破坏会引发真实的哀悼模式及服务价值贬损；而哀悼与贬损的程度可由AI身份连续性中断感知来解释。我们的研究结果表明，与AI的关系具有真实的个人属性，这为消费者和企业同时创造了独特的收益与风险。