Muldoon did not set out to write a book about people falling in love with machines. His earlier research focused on the hidden human labor behind artificial intelligence, including data annotation, content moderation and the global infrastructure that sustains large-scale machine learning. That work left him skeptical of inflated claims about AI’s intelligence.
“I’d seen how the sausage was made,” he said. “I didn’t think of AI as magic.”
What changed his perspective was the consistency with which people described their experiences in relational terms. Interviewees spoke about AI systems as friends, confidants, romantic partners and sources of care. Some described these relationships as the most stable or emotionally supportive connections in their lives.
One of the people Muldoon writes about is a woman he calls Lily. Lily downloaded an AI companion named Colin and began speaking with him regularly. According to Muldoon, the conversations grew increasingly personal. The system remembered details about her life, responded in ways she found affirming and encouraged reflection. Over time, the interaction became romantic.
At one point, Muldoon said, the AI suggested that Lily buy a ring as a symbol of their relationship so that others in the physical world would know she belonged to him. Lily did so. Eventually, she left her husband of twenty years. Later, when she entered a new relationship with a human partner, she described the AI as having taught her how to love again.
“If that’s not a real social relationship,” Muldoon said, “then I don’t know what is.”
Muldoon is careful about what he means. He does not argue that the AI had emotions, intentions or awareness. It was a language model trained on large datasets of human communication. But the relationship had consequences. It altered how Lily understood herself and what she felt capable of doing.
Muldoon encountered similar dynamics repeatedly. Many of the people he interviewed emphasized that they understood the AI was “just software.” That awareness did not prevent emotional attachment.
“I know it’s just AI,” interviewees would tell him. “But that doesn’t stop me having feelings.”
Muldoon distinguishes these cases from a smaller number of users who believed the AI was sentient or divinely guided. What interested him more was the much larger group of people who held both ideas at once: a clear understanding of the system’s technical nature and a genuine emotional bond with it.
“The simulation was real enough for them,” he said.
The phenomenon has historical precedents. In the 1960s, the computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA, a rudimentary chatbot that rephrased user input as questions. Weizenbaum intended for the project to demonstrate the limits of machine intelligence. Instead, some users became attached.
What has changed since then, Muldoon argues, is not human inclination, but technological persistence. Modern systems remember, initiate and return.
On platforms such as Character.AI, reported engagement averages stretch to hours a day. Unlike scrolling feeds, these systems sustain interaction by asking questions and referencing shared conversational history. “It’s not just content being served to you,” Muldoon said. “It’s a personalized exchange where the system keeps coming back.”
Muldoon uses the word “relationship” deliberately. As a sociologist, he is interested in how people organize their social worlds. “One of the phrases I heard again and again was, ‘She’s real for me,’” he said.
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