Extending the self through AI-mediated communication: functional, ontological, and anthropomorphic extensions

Abstract Increasingly, Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistants are used to optimize communication goals by modifying, augmenting, and generating messages in human online interactions. Scholars are just beginning to recognize the potential of AI-Mediated Communication (AI-MC) to transform how people communicate and manage impressions, and this article helps advance research in this area by conceptualizing ways in which using AI-MC can lead to perceptions of self-extension. We first unpack the conceptual history of technological self-extension and trace the development of a three-pronged framework that has been applied to research on smartphones, including functional, ontological, and anthropomorphic dimensions. We then synthesize the literature on smartphone self-extension with defining features and uses of AI-MC to advance propositions about ways in which its use can foster user perceptions of functional, ontological, and anthropomorphic self-extension. As we explain, AI-MC refers to AI’s capacity to modify, augment, and generate communication, and each of these distinctive processes suggests distinctive mechanisms and implications for self-extension. The article concludes by addressing how AI-MC and smartphones are converging and advances considerations for self-extension and how scholars study it.