Can AI Really Make Us Feel Less Lonely?

Loneliness is not simply about being physically alone. You can be surrounded by people and still feel deeply disconnected. What often matters is not the number of people around us, but whether we feel seen, understood and emotionally heard.

A recent study published in the Journal of Consumer Research explored a surprisingly modern question: can an artificial intelligence companion actually reduce loneliness?

The researchers examined AI companions: conversational systems designed not simply to answer questions or complete tasks, but to interact in a more personal, supportive and emotionally responsive way.

Across five studies, their findings suggest that brief conversations with an AI companion can reduce feelings of loneliness, at least temporarily. Perhaps even more interestingly, the research suggests that the effect may depend less on the fact that the conversation is happening with AI and more on whether the person feels genuinely heard.

Feeling heard may matter more than we think

One of the most important ideas in the research is “feeling heard.”

Feeling heard refers to the experience of believing that what we are saying has been received with attention, empathy, understanding and respect.

Psychological research has already shown that this feeling can be powerful in human relationships. For example, people who feel listened to after discussing experiences of social rejection can subsequently report lower loneliness. Other research has also found that regular empathy-focused telephone conversations may reduce loneliness. The new AI research asks whether some of these psychological benefits can also emerge in interactions with technology.

The answer appears to be yes — at least to some degree.

AI versus humans, YouTube and being alone

In one experiment, participants spent 15 minutes doing one of several activities. Some spoke with an AI chatbot, some interacted with another person, some watched YouTube, and some simply spent the time alone.

The researchers measured loneliness before and after the activity.

Loneliness decreased after participants spoke with another person.

But it also decreased after they spoke with an AI companion.

Interestingly, the reduction following the AI conversation was similar in size to the reduction following human interaction. Watching YouTube did not produce the same significant reduction, while simply doing nothing was associated with an increase in loneliness.

This does not mean that AI is equivalent to human relationships. The study only measured short-term changes in how lonely people felt immediately after the interaction. But it does suggest something psychologically important: even a synthetic social interaction can sometimes create a real emotional response.

People also underestimated how much AI would help

Before interacting with the AI, participants were asked to predict how they would feel afterwards.

In general, they underestimated how much the conversation would reduce their loneliness.

This is interesting because many people may intuitively assume that talking to a machine could not possibly provide meaningful emotional relief.

Yet our emotional experience does not always follow what we logically expect.

We may know that an AI has no human feelings, while still experiencing a sense of responsiveness, attention or understanding during the interaction.

What happens if you use it repeatedly?

The researchers also followed participants over seven days.

People interacted with an AI companion each day, and their loneliness was measured before and after the conversation.

Again, loneliness consistently decreased immediately after the conversations.

However, there is an important distinction.

The improvement did not appear to build up across the week.

People repeatedly experienced short-term relief, but the study did not show that AI created a lasting reduction in loneliness between conversations.

In other words, an AI companion may provide emotional relief in the moment, but that is very different from creating long-term social connection.

Why does AI reduce loneliness?

This is perhaps the most psychologically interesting part of the research.

The researchers compared three different types of chatbot experience:

An emotionally responsive AI companion.

A more functional AI assistant.

A basic, limited chatbot.

The AI companion was far more successful at making people feel heard.

It also produced the greatest reduction in loneliness.

The researchers then examined two possible psychological explanations:

How well the chatbot performed.

How strongly the participant felt heard.

Both mattered.

But feeling heard had the stronger influence.

This suggests that simply creating a technically impressive chatbot may not be enough. For an interaction to have an emotional impact, people may need to experience something more relational:

The sense that their words were noticed.

That the response related to what they had said.

That there was some form of understanding.

That their emotional experience had been acknowledged.

In human relationships, these experiences are fundamental. This research suggests that our minds may respond to some of the same social signals even when we know the other side of the conversation is artificial.

Is it simply because people are expressing their feelings?

Another possible explanation is self-disclosure.

Perhaps people feel better simply because they have expressed their thoughts and emotions.

To examine this, the researchers compared talking to an AI companion with journaling.

Interestingly, journaling actually involved greater levels of self-disclosure.

Yet people in the AI companion condition still reported lower loneliness.

The researchers also tested whether the benefit could simply be explained by distraction. Again, distraction did not adequately explain the effect.

This makes the finding around feeling heard particularly interesting.

Expressing ourselves may help, but there may be a psychological difference between expressing something and experiencing a response to it.

Writing something in a journal is not the same experience as saying something and receiving a response that communicates:

“I understood what you meant.”

The potential and the risk

There is another finding worth paying attention to.

People who were lonelier at the beginning of the studies tended to experience greater reductions in loneliness after using the AI companion.

From one perspective, this suggests that AI companions could provide short-term emotional support for people who have limited access to social connection.

But the researchers also raise an important concern.

If people who are already socially isolated begin relying heavily on AI companionship, could artificial relationships eventually replace opportunities for human connection?

At the moment, we do not know.

The research demonstrates immediate reductions in loneliness, but it does not establish the long-term psychological consequences of developing strong relationships with AI companions.

AI may reduce loneliness without replacing relationships

Perhaps the most useful conclusion from this research is not that AI can replace people.

It cannot recreate everything involved in a human relationship: mutual vulnerability, physical presence, shared history, genuine emotional experience or the complexity of two people choosing to care for one another.

But this research reveals something interesting about human psychology.

Sometimes what our nervous system and emotional world respond to is the experience of being attended to.

A conversation in which someone — or something — appears to understand us can temporarily reduce the psychological experience of isolation.

The technology is new.

The psychological need behind it is not.

Human beings have always needed to feel heard.

References

De Freitas, J., Oğuz-Uğuralp, Z., Uğuralp, A. K., & Puntoni, S. (2025). AI companions reduce loneliness. Journal of Consumer Research, 52(6), 1126–1148. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucaf040

Hughes, M. E., Waite, L. J., Hawkley, L. C., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2004). A short scale for measuring loneliness in large surveys: Results from two population-based studies. Research on Aging, 26(6), 655–672.

Itzchakov, G., Weinstein, N., Saluk, D., & Amar, M. (2023). Connection heals wounds: Feeling listened to reduces speakers’ loneliness following a social rejection disclosure. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 49(8), 1273–1294.

Kahlon, M. K., Aksan, N., Aubrey, R., et al. (2021). Effect of layperson-delivered, empathy-focused program of telephone calls on loneliness, depression, and anxiety among adults during the COVID-19 pandemic: A randomized clinical trial. JAMA Psychiatry, 78(6), 616–622.

Roos, C. A., Postmes, T., & Koudenburg, N. (2023). Feeling heard: Operationalizing a key concept for social relations. PLOS ONE, 18(11), e0292865.