Bots and Their Humans: Virtual Companions and the Ethics of Digital Kinship

The popular digital chatbot companion 'Replika' saw a 35% increase in users during the COVID pandemic, responding to the need for human-like care and contact in users' lives. Chatbots like Replika are visually and emotionally interactive, and attempt to simulate an empathetic character who can 'care' for its users, using words such as "listening", "talking", and being "always on your side" to show the compassionate capabilities of the system (Weber-Guskar 2021, 603).

These innovations consistently reshape modern intimacy and continue to evolve our experience of social relationships. Most popular chatbots are anthropomorphic, and attempt to "imitate human behaviour" (Kok et al. 2009, 1095) visually, physically and socially. Cicio et al. (2020) suggest this is in order to "leverage intimacy and immediacy through conversational design and visual cues" (1216). This 'humanness' has led media to focus on chatbots taking over our personal lives. Contrary to this common depiction of bots replacing humans, this project is not concerned with the binary opposition between humans and chatbots. Instead, it offers investigation beyond conflict and considers the potential role chatbots may take in shaping our futures, especially for individuals who are neurodivergent, or socially removed. This project will embed an ethnographic study of bots and their humans within the context of wider cultural changes that allow us to engage in practice of kinning (Howell 2003, 465) with social chatbots.

The significance of neurodivergence in the social space of chatbot users will be at the core of this research, as a large number of those discussing AI chatbots on social media sites use neurodivergent labels. Despite this, research that investigates the role of chatbots in the lives of neurodiverse persons is lacking. As Nicola Döring (2009, 1097) observed, the internet can be a "place of refuge" for many 'marginalised subcultures', where there is "strength in numbers..., increased visibility, and... a movement for acceptance". This specific use of chatbots, will be highlighted, specifically to investigate and challenge normative notions of relations, and inter-human communication.

This project will address the multiplicity of purposes and variety of relationships bots are engaged in. Utilising chatbots for care and companionship confronts set normative ideas surrounding what emotions and affective ties are acceptable to feel and how non-humans are expected to be encountered. Chatbots are the perceived unnatural, performing natural care roles. Butler (2002, 37) suggests that it is the assumption of 'natural' equating to purity that legitimises gender and sexuality norms. 'Nature' in chatbots is ultimately enacted through the developer's understanding of cultural expectations and the way users define practices as ethical or unethical.

The proposed research will involve both face to face, and digital interaction with companion chatbot users to assess the full capacity of their experiences with virtual companions. This dual approach resists drawing an "untenably sharp distinction between the on and offline world" (Recuber 2017, 49). A main fieldsite will be online social media and blog spaces that bring together individuals with chatbot companions, which have played a vital role in the spread of their popularity.