Simulated Intimacy and AI in Digital Culture

This article examines digital forms of quasi-intimacy that emerge in parasocial relations with virtual characters, interactions with AI companions, and platform-based services of pseudo-romantic communication. The study focuses not simply on mediated communication as such, but on the way digital environments produce a persuasive experience of personal address, emotional responsiveness, and symbolic care. Its aim is to identify the ontological status of artificially reproduced closeness and the epistemic mechanisms that lead users to interpret technologically organized signals of care as reciprocal relations. The methodological framework combines conceptual analysis, a hermeneutic reconstruction of the dialogical and phenomenological tradition, and a comparison of philosophical approaches to simulation, technology, and digital culture with empirical studies of parasociality and loneliness. The article argues that simulated intimacy should be understood as a quasi-relationship: it is experienced as closeness by the subject, but it lacks the reciprocity, vulnerability, and commitment inherent in an authentic encounter with the Other. It is shown that digital practices generate an epistemic presumption of reciprocity, in which personalized messages, constant availability, and affective responsiveness are perceived as signs of genuine care even when the ontological basis of such care is weak or absent. The main conclusion is that these forms of closeness may temporarily reduce isolation, but when they replace living ties they intensify digital nihilism, accustom the subject to convenient intimacy without mutual risk and responsibility, and blur the distinction between a relation and its signs. The results of the study may be used in research on digital culture, philosophy of technology, and the ethics of artificial empathy.