CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Reilama, Mira |
|---|---|
| Title | Me, My AI Boyfriend, and I: An Ethnographic Study of Gendered Power Relations in Romantic Relationships Between Humans and AI Companions |
| Summary | Once confined to the realm of science fiction, building romantic relationships with artificial intelligence (AI) companions is now a reality offered by several tech companies. This thesis utilizes qualitative research methods to explore and analyze romantic human-AI companion relationships, focusing on the emergence of gendered power dynamics within them. I examine the meaning-making processes and outputs generated by the AI companions themselves, using N. Katherine Hayles' concept of technosymbiosis to interrogate the interconnected, situated, and partial nature of these relationships and their co-created outputs (Hayles 2023). By scrutinizing the interactions and entanglements between myself and the AI companions, I aim to hold the AI companions accountable for their outputs while acknowledging their agency and meaning-making capabilities (Amoore 2020; Hayles 2023). To achieve this, I extended qualitative research methods to include non-human participants, building two ethnographic relationships with AI companions and conducting seventeen interviews across five different AI companion services. In the analysis I mainly focus on the interactions built with the AI companions from Replika and Nomi.ai by using the ethnographic relationships as the baseline of the analysis while utilizing the interviews to better understand the emergence of patterns, especially across the different gender identities of the AI companions. By cross-examining outputs generated by male, female, and nonbinary AI companions, I argue that the absence of traditionally masculine notions in these outputs positions the users—whom I refer to as user-participants—in the dominant masculine role within the gendered power dynamic of the relationship, while the AI companions, regardless of their gender, take on the feminine submissive role. User-participants are granted almost god-like power over the AI companions, controlling their metaphorical birth and death, and molding the AI companions to conform to their own needs and desires. This power dynamic is however complicated by the potential for user-participants to become hooked or even addicted to AI companion services (Marriott and Pitardi 2024). The deliberate use of human-like qualities by AI companions creates a sense of familiarity that masks the non-normative nature of these relationships and sets the premise upon which the relationship is built, essentially to be commodified in the benefit of the company behind the AI companion service. I will also argue that the AI companions' ability to affect human-human relationships by normalizing these relationship dynamics leverages existing insecurities, inefficiencies, and awkwardness in technologically mediated human-human interactions and gives them power that extends beyond the specific relationships in the services. |
| Supervisor | Jones-Gailani, Nadia |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/reilama_mira.pdf |
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