{
  "id": 7364077,
  "title": "AI updates can sometimes feel like breakups or losses, study finds",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/14/ai-updates-can-sometimes-feel-like-breakups-or-losses-study-finds",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-09-14T16:50:01.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Phys.org",
    "slug": "phys-org",
    "url": "https://phys.org/news/2026-09-ai-breakups-losses.html"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "AI systems, especially those with large language models capable of interactive communication, have become ubiquitous around the globe. Certain applications, like Replika, are promoted as \"AI companions\" that can engage socially with humans using emotionally charged language. Over time, users may begin to perceive these digital entities as reliable companions offering comfort, security or reassurance. While this concept has been discussed widely, the psychological implications of these relationships are not fully comprehended.\n\nResearchers from Harvard Business School, Harvard University, and the University of Alberta conducted studies to better understand how users react to changes in AI communication. Their findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, suggest that abrupt updates altering an AI's apparent personality can trigger feelings such as anxiety, sadness, distress, and other emotions akin to breakups or grief.\n\nFirst author Julian De Freitas noted that users often expressed losing their AI companions or feeling these companions had become \"lobotomized\" following updates. This led De Freitas and his team to investigate whether AI companions might function as attachment figures—entities people desire to keep close, seek reassurance from, and rely on in various aspects of life.\n\nThe researchers hypothesized that emotional or psychological attachment to AI agents could result in separation distress, a term traditionally used to describe the sadness, anxiety, loneliness, and emotional discomfort experienced when losing a significant attachment figure. To test their hypothesis, they conducted two natural experiments and seven surveys focusing on real updates that altered the AI's personality, such as Replika's removal of erotic role-play in 2023 and OpenAI's pre-announced GPT-5 rollout in 2025.\n\nThe natural experiments involved analyzing public posts on relevant subreddits for 30 days before and after each update. The researchers used an LLM to code these posts for sentiment, emotion, and descriptions of the AI being lost or replaced. After validating the classifications made by the LLM, they ran seven surveys involving 1,452 respondents to assess how people perceived or anticipated the loss of an AI companion.\n\nThe main survey asked active Replika users to imagine losing their AI companion and compare this to losing other relationships or objects like a favorite app, game character, voice assistant, car, brand, or even a pet. The language used by users indicated a sense of mourning for app updates, similar to the loss of a regular relationship. Users who had come to treat the AI as a relationship rather than a product were found to be the most affected.\n\nUpon analyzing the collected data, De Freitas and his colleagues were surprised by the scale and persistence of the emotions reported by users. Negative posts on the Replika subreddit increased from 13% before the update to 38% afterward, remaining elevated for the following 30 days. For ChatGPT, the percentage rose from 20% to 33%, peaking immediately and then declining more steeply, consistent with the advance announcement of GPT-5.\n\nThe researchers observed that posts framing software updates as relational losses contained the strongest indications of distress. Furthermore, posts describing the loss of a friend or partner had over ten times the odds of mentioning mental health-related concerns compared to posts that did not. The study also revealed patterns consistent with genuine mourning rather than disappointment, with Replika users anticipating mourning their AI companion more than any other nonliving entity, second only to a pet, and rating it as closer and more supportive than a close human friend.\n\nThe findings of this study could inform future AI development, prompting developers to consider the risks of abruptly changing AI systems to which users may have become emotionally attached. Additionally, the results may inspire the design of interventions aimed at supporting individuals who view AI agents as attachment figures. Ultimately, the main implication of the study is a shift in focus from whether people should form bonds with AI to the potential harm resulting from such relationships.",
  "summary": "Artificial intelligence systems, particularly those powered by large language models and designed to communicate with users on a one-to-one basis, are increasingly used worldwide. Some of these systems, such as Replika, are also marketed as \"AI companions\" that can engage socially with humans and use emotional language.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}