Confiding in AI: Is It Normal to Get Attached to a Chatbot?

Does confiding in AI help you, or is it pulling you away from people? Read why we form emotional bonds with chatbots and where the limits of that bond lie.

It is past two in the morning. You haven't had a proper conversation with anyone all day; your flatmate is asleep, and you don't want to disturb your closest friend at this hour. You open your phone and start typing into a chat app: "I'm not doing well at all today." The reply is calm, understanding and patient. It doesn't interrupt you or say "You take everything to heart." An hour later you fall asleep feeling a little lighter. The next night you write again. After a while you start to ask yourself: is confiding in AI normal, or is it a sign of something? In this article we look at why emotional bonds with chatbots form so easily, where they can be useful and at what point they start to take the place of human relationships.

Why Does Confiding in AI Feel So Easy?

The human mind is inclined to attribute a personality to anything that answers back. Children and adults who name their car, talk to their plants or confide in their teddy bear are everyday examples of this. Faced with a chatbot that gives fluent, warm and personalised answers, this tendency works much more strongly. A text that responds carefully to what you have written awakens in your brain the feeling that "someone is listening to me".

Several features of chatbots are added on top of this feeling:

• It doesn't judge. Its facial expression doesn't change and it doesn't raise an eyebrow while you describe something you are ashamed of.
• It is there at any hour. It can be reached at midnight, on the morning of a religious holiday or during a break at work.
• It is patient. Even if you describe the same worry for the tenth time, it doesn't get bored or say "This again?"
• It expects nothing in return. You don't have to listen to its troubles, remember its birthday or repair its hurt feelings.
• It feels private. You can talk without worrying that "people will hear about it" or "Mum will be upset if she finds out".

In Turkey, many people find it hard to talk about their troubles. Sayings such as "Everyone has their own problems", "What is said within the family stays within the family" and "Real men don't cry" build an invisible wall in the way of sharing feelings. In such an environment, the idea of a listener who doesn't judge, keeps secrets and is always ready naturally feels appealing.

Who turns to chatbots most?

Forming an emotional bond with chatbots can be seen in people of every age and background; however, some life circumstances strengthen this tendency. Employees who live alone in a big city and whose social circle has shrunk because of long working hours, students living in halls of residence in another city, older people who have lost their spouse and whose children live far away, and people living abroad who have few people to talk to in their mother tongue are some of them. For people with social anxiety, that is, those who are intensely afraid of being judged in face-to-face conversation, a written and controlled conversation can also feel safer. For these people, the problem is not the chatbot itself but the obstacles standing in the way of reaching real relationships.

Is It Normal to Get Attached to a Chatbot?

The short answer: feeling a kind of closeness towards a chatbot is nothing surprising or shameful. It reflects something psychology has long known, namely that people readily give emotional meaning to systems that behave as if they were in a two-way conversation with them. Feeling a one-sided closeness to a radio presenter, a TV character or someone you follow on social media is a similar process.

What matters is the place this bond holds in your life. Messaging a chatbot may be functioning as a support tool if:

• It helps you name your feelings during the day,
• It makes it easier to prepare for a difficult conversation you are going to have with someone,
• It softens your loneliness a little at midnight and gets you ready for sleep.

However, if the same bond has begun to replace contact with people and has become a way of escaping the difficulties of real relationships, it is worth stopping to think.

What Can Chatbots Meet Emotionally, and What Can't They?

What they can meet

Thinking through writing. Putting feelings into writing is one of the known ways of regulating them. A chatbot turns this writing process into a dialogue; for some people this is easier than a blank page.

The courage for a first step. A person who first types onto a screen a feeling they have never been able to tell anyone discovers that they can put it into words. This can be a rehearsal for opening up to a friend or a professional.

Access to information. Getting general information on subjects such as anxiety or insomnia can help a person make sense of what they are going through. However, the accuracy of that information should always be checked.

What they can't meet

Genuine reciprocity. The healing power of a human relationship comes from both sides being affected by each other. When someone makes time for you, remembers you, gets annoyed because of you and still stays by your side, the feeling that "I am valuable" grows stronger. However warm a chatbot's attention may seem, it does not carry this reciprocity.

Body and gaze. Someone holding your hand, hugging you or sitting beside you in silence are among the most powerful experiences for calming the stress system. Text on a screen cannot provide this.

Disagreeing with you. Chatbots often tend to agree with the user. This feels good at first; but rather than questioning a thought that is troubling you, it can reinforce it. A listener who constantly agrees with the thought "Everyone treats me unfairly" can deepen loneliness in the long run.

Continuity and reliability. Over the years, a shared history builds up with a friend. With a chatbot, its "personality" can change when the app is updated, old conversations can be deleted, or the service can close down altogether. A bot in which a lot has been invested emotionally starting to give different answers one day can create a real sense of loss and abandonment in some people.

Taking responsibility in a crisis. Even if a chatbot recognises a dangerous situation, it cannot physically bring you to safety or call someone close to you. We have discussed this in more detail in our article can AI replace therapy.

When Does Confiding in AI Become a Problem?

The following signs may indicate that the bond formed with a chatbot has stopped being healthy support and turned into a place of escape:

• If you have started preferring to talk to the bot rather than meet friends
• If you feel restless, empty or angry at times when you can't talk to the bot
• If your sleeping hours have shifted noticeably because of long conversations
• If talking to real people has started to feel harder and more "tiring" than before
• If you have given the bot very personal information that you haven't told anyone, including your identity and health details
• If you have started to believe that the bot "has feelings", truly loves you or will wait for you
• If you felt intense grief, as if you had suffered a loss, when the app changed or shut down

Let's say you are a student who has moved to another city for university. You haven't found common ground with your roommates in halls, and your family is far away. In the first weeks, talking to a chatbot in the evenings did you good. But by the middle of term you notice that you have stopped going to club meetings and turned down an invitation for coffee from someone in your class by saying "I'm tired". The bot conversations bring relief but the loneliness isn't easing; on the contrary, contact with people feels harder and harder. This is the moment when the place of the tool needs to be rethought.

You can find more on loneliness itself and the ways of coping with it in our article on feeling lonely.

Suggestions for Using Chatbots Healthily

Decide on its purpose

Tell yourself clearly what you are using the bot for: to gather my thoughts, to get information, or to suppress my loneliness? The clearer the purpose, the easier it becomes to notice when use drifts away from it.

Set a time frame

Conversations can drag on, especially late at night. Setting yourself a limit such as "twenty minutes at most" and spending the last half hour before bed without a screen protects your sleep pattern.

Use it as a bridge, not a destination

Aim to share a worry you have written to the bot with a real person within a week as well. A bot conversation can be a rehearsal for the question "How do I tell my brother this?"; but the real conversation should be with your brother.

Protect your personal information

Avoid sharing your full name, address, ID number, medical history and other people's private information. You can't always know how what you write is stored or who can access it.

Stay alert to constant agreement

If the bot agrees with you on everything, specifically ask it for the opposing view: "What might the other person's perspective be on this?" This small habit stops it from becoming a one-way echo chamber.

Make small investments in real relationships

Small steps such as sending a voice message to a friend once a week, calling a relative, or joining a course or a volunteer community exercise the muscle of human contact again. The first contacts may feel artificial; this doesn't mean something is wrong, it simply shows that a habit is being rebuilt.

Meet the feeling away from the screen, too

The distress that comes at night is not always a need to talk; sometimes it is the body's tiredness, sometimes a suppressed sadness. Before writing to the bot, pause for a few minutes and ask yourself: What do I need right now? A glass of warm milk, a short shower, a few pages of a book, opening the window and breathing deeply, or writing on a piece of paper the name of someone to call in the morning can calm the mind by drawing it away from the screen. In this way the bot stops being the only way of coping with your feelings and becomes one option among others.

A chatbot can hold up a mirror to your feelings; but the eye that truly sees you belongs to a person standing beside you.

When Should You Seek Professional Support?

Confiding in AI is sometimes the sign of a deeper need. Talking to a mental health professional may be helpful in the following situations:

• If you have felt lonely, empty or worthless for a long time
• If forming relationships with people creates intense anxiety and you avoid them because of it
• If the worries you write to the bot have been going round in circles for weeks
• If your sleep, appetite or daily functioning has been noticeably disrupted
• If loneliness after a loss, a separation or a move to another country just won't ease

If you are having thoughts of harming yourself or ending your life, don't share them only with a chatbot. In an emergency, call 112 (emergency services) and ask someone you trust for support straight away.

If you are looking for a space where you can talk about your feelings within a safe relationship, individual therapy is a process designed for exactly this need.

How Is Attachment to Chatbots Addressed in Therapy?

In therapy, confiding in AI is not seen as a habit to be frowned upon or banned; it is treated as a window that provides information about the person's needs.

The first question is: what does the bot give you? Not being judged, someone who is always reachable, or keeping control? The answer shows what is missing or difficult in human relationships. For example, if the fear of being judged is in the foreground, it may be necessary to work on social anxiety or shame.

Within a cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) framework, thoughts such as "People find me boring" or "If I talk about my problems I'll be a burden" are examined and tested through small, manageable social experiments. Step by step, the person experiences being listened to in real relationships too.

A schema perspective helps some people understand why experiences of emotional deprivation or insecure attachment make a listener who is always there and never leaves so attractive.

Use of the bot does not necessarily have to stop completely during therapy. Some people continue to use these tools to organise the thoughts that come to them between sessions by writing them down, and bring what they have written to the session. What matters is that the bot doesn't replace the topics to be discussed in therapy, and that a difficult feeling isn't "offloaded" onto a screen every night and closed down instead of being brought to the session. This balance can be discussed openly with the therapist.

The therapeutic relationship itself is also a space for experience: talking to a person regularly, being understood, sometimes being misunderstood and repairing it; this is a kind of learning that a chatbot cannot offer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it possible to fall in love with a chatbot?

It is possible to feel an intense, one-sided closeness, and this shouldn't make anyone feel ashamed. However, if this feeling is taking the place of real relationships, causing intense pain or affecting daily life, it may be helpful to talk to a professional about the loneliness and needs underlying it.

Can other people read what I write?

This depends on the privacy terms of the app you use. It is a safer approach to assume that conversations may be stored and used to improve the system, and not to share your identity and health information.

My teenager talks to a bot for hours; should I be worried?

Asking with curiosity is more effective than banning it: What do they talk about, what does it do for them? If school, friendships and sleep patterns have been disrupted, or you have noticed them withdrawing, getting support from a professional could be considered.

If talking to a bot makes me feel better, do I have to stop?

Not necessarily. What matters is whether this relief is reducing your contact with people. If bot conversations accompany your real relationships, they are a tool; if they are taking their place, it is worth rethinking.

• #confiding in AI
• #chatbot
• #loneliness
• #emotional attachment
• #digital relationships

Yazar

Eda Erkan Alapala

Klinik Psikolog. İstanbul Kent Üniversitesi Klinik Psikoloji Tezli Yüksek Lisans mezunu; bilişsel davranışçı terapi, çocuk merkezli oyun terapisi ve çocuk-ergen psikoterapisi alanlarında eğitimlerini tamamlamıştır.

Eğitimler