AI Companions, Memory and Healthy Aging

What happens when an AI companion remembers you?

We study how empathy and long-term memory shape relationships between older adults and AI companions. Our field experiments examine loneliness, cognitive stimulation, emotional connection, healthy aging, and responses to AI-suggested health behaviors.

Memory transforms an assistant into a relationship. In field experiments with older adults, we study whether memory-equipped, empathic AI companions reduce loneliness, stimulate cognition, and deepen perceived relationships, with the AI and beyond it.

We then trace how these social-emotional bonds shape something consequential: the willingness to adopt AI-suggested health behaviors around diet, sleep, and physical activity, informing the ethical design of technologies for healthy aging.

Related publications

2024

More than just a chat: A taxonomy of consumers' relationships with conversational AI agents and their well-being implications

Alabed, A., Javornik, A., Gregory-Smith, D., & Casey, R.

European Journal of Marketing, 58(2), 373–409

2022

Trojan horse or useful helper? A relationship perspective on artificial intelligence assistants with humanlike features

Uysal, E., Alavi, S., & Bezençon, V.

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 50(6), 1153–1175