How Consistent Friendlike Conversation with AI Companions Influences Our Attitudes and Perceptions Toward AI: An Exploratory Experiment

Despite skepticism and distrust in artificial intelligence (AI), it is increasingly integrated into daily life, with its potential benefits drawing interest. Yet little is known about the attitudinal and psychological effects of human-AI interactions, and whether consistent interactions with AI chatbots can change users' attitudes and perceptions. Our within-subjects experiment (<i>N</i> = 52) investigated how five days of socially oriented, friendlike interactions with an AI chatbot, versus a journaling control, influenced changes in attitudes and perceptions of AI. Participants' attitudes towards AI, trust, perceived empathy, anthropomorphism, animacy, likeability, perceived intelligence and safety, dependency, and exploratory well-being indicators were recorded. Results indicated that consistent friendlike interaction with AI chatbots led to significant increases in perceived empathy and animacy of technology, but no changes in global attitudes and perceptions of anthropomorphism. Participants also reported higher self-esteem levels after journaling, compared to after AI interaction. This suggests that although friendly engagement with AI chatbots may lead to perceptions of empathy and lifelikeness, where users interpret it to be genuinely understanding and supportive, this comes with trade-offs for self-esteem. Concurrently, empathy and perceived lifelikeness increased without corresponding increases in anthropomorphism, indicating that users may regard AI chatbots as separate living entities rather than having human-like qualities.