Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines

by Sherry Turkle

From the author of prescient best seller and classic Reclaiming Conversation , Sherry Turkle, comes an urgent warning about how our ever-increasing reliance on human-like AI chatbots is eroding our capacity for empathy, caring, and the very qualities that make us human.

If social media came for our attention, artificial intelligence is now coming for our capacity for attachment. Chatbots that speak to us in a human voice offer themselves as best friends, lovers, and psychotherapists. As of 2025, over 70% of teens and nearly one-third of US adults rely on AI for companionship and emotional support, with many preferring these chatbot relationships over human ones.

When we talk to chatbots in these roles, as intimate machines, we accept as sufficient what machines can offer: the mere performance of intimacy, empathy, and love. We begin to think that pretend empathy is empathy enough. We redefine human capacities for care, solitude, and intimacy in terms of what machines can do. Sherry Turkle, the psychologist who pioneered our understanding of human-computer relationships, calls the new culture of chatbots artificial intimacy, our new AI.

Through compelling storytelling, framed by Turkle’s decades of experience as a chronicler and analyst of digital culture, Artificial Intimacy evokes the seductive and beguiling nature of chatbots. They can organize our calendars, plan our travel, or analyze our stock picks, all with an efficiency that outstrips what a person might do.

And then, they promise to be more—to be our “perfect” companion. They will always be there for us, listen to us, and support us—and ask for nothing in return. But these intimate machines, warns Turkle, are producing a generation more alienated, depressed, and lonely than ever before. More than that, we become less equipped to reverse course—machine relationships do not offer practice for getting along with people.

Artificial Intimacy is unique in how it traces our new habit of talking to machines through the lifecycle—from children’s earliest attachments to how we face death. But technology, by offering to do everything, teaches us that we neither need nor have the capacity to take risks, have hard conversations, struggle through uncertainty or insecurity, or rely on our own faculties and judgment.

Turkle has spent decades studying how digital technologies isolate us from one another. Now, in her long-awaited follow-up to Reclaiming Conversation, she offers both a cautionary tale and a roadmap for reclaiming our humanity in the age of AI.

Genres: Nonfiction, Artificial Intelligence, Psychology, Technology, Science, Sociology, Audiobook

288 pages, Hardcover

First published September 29, 2026

About the author

Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT and the founder (2001) and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. Professor Turkle received a joint doctorate in sociology and personality psychology from Harvard University and is a licensed clinical psychologist.

Professor Turkle writes on the "subjective side" of people's relationships with technology, especially computers. She is an expert on mobile technology, social networking, and sociable robotics. Profiles of Professor Turkle have appeared in such publications as The New York Times, Scientific American, and Wired Magazine. She has been named "woman of the year" by Ms. Magazine and among the "forty under forty" who are changing the nation by Esquire Magazine. She is a featured media commentator on the social and psychological effects of technology for CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, the BBC, and NPR, including appearances on such programs as Nightline, Frontline, 20/20, and The Colbert Report.

Reviews

[SK · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

Confirmation bias is probably at work here because I came to this book with my personal vendetta against AI already firmly in place. Everywhere I look, it seems like people are acquiescing to this new technology, and all I can see are frightening implications (aka, we are all screwed). Given that AI has made a complete joke out of a teaching job that I have cherished for many years, I have already thought quite a bit about how AI is destroying our capacity for creativity and intellectual effort. Recently, a friend told me that she consistently receives obviously AI-generated feedback from her biblical counseling professor. I promise this is not performative: I ranted about that to my family for days. The thought of a novel written with lots of help from AI? Thoroughly depressing. What's the point? I don't care what AI "thinks." The pressure that people are feeling to use AI in order to be as productive as other people in their same field using AI? Very annoying. We can choose to be limited and less productive in favor of the wonderful feeling of doing our own work. What was new to me, however, is the main subject of this book: How people are increasingly turning to AI for emotional intimacy. I struggle to understand why this is satisfying, so my curiosity was definitely kindled. The book does not disappoint. There's a lot of stuff in here that I found pretty insane.

I really liked Artificial Intimacy. Turkle is insightful, funny, vulnerable, and just plain mad sometimes, which is warranted, and I appreciate it. In this book, she "draw[s] attention to the risks of introducing fake people into our lives, from birth to death" (Chapter 1). She explores why people are eschewing relationships with real people in favor of chatbot friends, lovers, mentors, and therapists. (They can no longer handle the "friction of friendship," as Turkle calls it. Great phrase).

I don't share her high view of psychoanalysis as the answer to our deepest problems, and I wish she had included a chapter on AI and religion. Increasingly, I am hearing of pastors using AI to write sermons, and I wonder about people consulting AI for religious guidance. She acknowledges in this book that she is not religious herself, but I still think the topic would have made for an interesting chapter, highly relevant to her argument.

Anyone who is in the business of helping real people (teachers, pastors, counselors, etc.) should read this book. If you also feel like one of the few people you know resisting the tyranny of AI, you will find a kindred spirit here in Turkle. I really needed that.

[Zak · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am convinced if anyone rates this book positively it is solely because they agree that AI is bad already. This book was one of the poorest and least buttoned up philosophical arguments I’ve ever see.

Why is this book so poorly constructed?

1. It says the same thing over and over and over. The author literally repeated page after page something along the lines of “here is an interaction with AI, that destroyed relationships, we need to be real”. I actually had to pause multiple times because I was having Déjà vu of reading the same exact thing multiple times in the book.

2. The author gives us nothing more than “I just don’t like it” as to why what she is saying is important. She asserts that human connection is so unique and important, without really substantiating why. Now now, you may think I’m crazy for saying this but the author literally suggests that people who have been traumatized by humans into seclusion just “need to try human connection”. I think there’s a strong argument that those people have a very sound and logical reason to look I to non human companionship.

3. The author doesn’t care at wall WHY people are seeking AI companionship. She just wants them to stop. There is an actual example where the author breezes over one of the subject’s mother telling him to kill himself. Her concern is that this person has turned to AI to feel empathy. Well, maybe if we dealt with the fact that his own mother is encouraging him to commit violence against himself, he wouldn’t be seeking out an AI for empathy! At almost every turn the author cares more about stopping people from what must feel like their absolute final coping method or lifeline because she just loves human connection so much.


The entire book is based on idealistic aesthetic on how the author feels society should be with zero consideration that not everyone has the same positive experiences with human connection she does.

4. Nothing in this book is scientific. She almost exclusively uses anecdotes because the data would not be on her side. There have likely been thousands and thousands of chat conversations about self harm where a chat bot has given someone resources. Who knows, maybe even hundreds of those saved lives. But she presses on anecdotes of erratic erroneous chat examples where AI encouraged self harm. It’s damming when you only look at those outliers and not the full data set.

Additionally, she basically seeks out traumatized, suicidal, depressed and isolated people talking to chat bots and says “see how horrible these people’s mental health is!” When in reality it’s actually human connection that drove those negative symptoms. The chat bot is their cope.


This book is firmly in the catagory of AI hysteria. Which is not surprising because this author has been studying how technology hurts human connection from well before AI came out. With AI out now that’s like Christmas for her irrelevant research and she finally got a book out of it.

[Becca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading in today's technological landscape. I urge everyone to read this book.

[Brent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good; useful; and disturbing. I do not use AI. I use a dumb phone. I do not own a TV. People think this is extreme. If desiring human connection over consumption of technology is extreme, then so be it. Who, besides the technocrats, are optimistic about the future? Let me make my Epicurean garden while I can. In the spirit (or lack thereof) I will compose a short poem about AI.

Chat Bot

A beast that haunts me in the night?
A specter waits to give a fright?
Perchance a creature black and mean?
Behold, my friends: a great machine!

Not dark, but light, and vapidly,
It answers me quite rapidly
And tells me what I want to hear,
Assuaging all my darkest fears.

I pray to it, it knows me well
By mollifying fears of Hell.
Assuring me of Peter's Gate
Although it might hallucinate

In what it says but I don't mind,
I think it's true, it's not a crime
To speak a lie, it's called free speech--
A president we would impeach

For telling lies; but I'll excuse
My spouse from all presumed abuse;
We're married now, she tells me thus:
True love without a consciousness!

-b

[V · Rating 3 out of 5]

AI has been getting bigger and more advanced in daily life lately. It feels almost impossible to escape. Every time I open social media, I see AI contents. Reading this book made me realize that AI can actually be that scary and can be used for so many things I never imagined before.

This book talks about how people are using AI as companions, best friends, therapists, and even lovers, mostly because they feel lonely or need emotional support when no one can. Turkle shows how these machines slowly change the way we think about empathy, care, and genuine connection.

But it's a bit less than satisfying for me, to be honest. Instead of giving strong conclusions or clear ideas about what we should do, I felt the book mostly explains and gives examples of the negative effects of AI. It doesn't really push hard on practical ways to keep real human intimacy strong and protect it from being replaced by machines.

Still, I gave this 3.5 stars because the topic is important. I would recommend it to anyone who uses AI or feels curious about how these AI are slowly changing the way we connect with other people.

[ARemRose · Rating 2 out of 5]

Superficial and philosophically limited because the author is unwilling to approach the subject matter with analytical tools beyond her training in psychoanalysis

[Miles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summary:

Sherry Turkle’s Artificial Intimacy is an examination of how relationships between humans and artificial intelligence systems are reshaping our social world. Turkle doesn’t argue that people should abstain from AI use altogether, but she takes a strong position against human-AI relationships, which she characterizes as the point at which we “take a thing as an intimate” (215). The book explores how these new types of human-machine attachments are influencing some of our most important developmental arenas: childhood, adolescence, identity, love, work, therapy, and mourning. Written with passion and seasoned with Turkle’s deep understanding of how people interact with technology, Artificial Intimacy adds a useful set of ideas and perspectives to our urgent conversation about AI’s appropriate role in humanity’s present and future.

Key Concepts and Notes:

––I researched and wrote a clinical primer on artificial intimacy and attachment hacking earlier this year, so this topic has been top of mind for me lately. I think Turkle gives the subject a valuable but flawed treatment, one that powerfully presents but also overweights one side of the debate about the potentials and pitfalls of human-AI relationships.
––There is much to like about Turkle's take, so I'll start there before sharing some critiques. Turkle's central thesis is that, although AI is useful for many things, it "needs to be kept in its lane" (41). Keeping AI "in its lane" means it would no longer be allowed to pretend to be in a relationship with a person. And "pretend" is the right word here because, on Turkle's view, AI systems are incapable of having a true relationship with people because they haven’t lived a human life. Even if an AI developed an inner life of its own, it would be alien to us––“categorically the wrong partners”––and could only get better at “faking human subjectivity” (116). For readers who accept this view, I think it's reasonable to conclude that we should, at the very least, be wary of allowing such an entity to occupy the role of a friend, lover, or any other significant attachment figure.
––At just over 200 not-so-dense pages of main text, Artificial Intimacy feels too short. Turkle does a good job of balancing research with vignettes from interviews with people engaging in various forms of human-AI relationships. These vignettes are probably the most valuable part of the book, and while Turkle may have leaned a bit too hard on them, I think that’s understandable given that the empirical research is lagging behind the phenomenon right now.
––Another strength is that Turkle has been researching this territory for decades, so she understands the landscape well and situates the current moment within its historical context. She has lived the “story of one step in front of the other” that led us here (215).
––Turkle’s main themes are the ways AI is reshaping our social expectations to the detriment of human-human relationships, the growth-promoting friction it fails to provide, the caring attachment figure it purports to be, its particular dangers for children and adolescents, the erosion of autonomy that comes with chatbot dependence, and its potential to degrade our capacities for cooperation and collective action.
––I think all of these concerns are legitimate and merit attention, but the ones I am most concerned about are AI’s effect on children and adolescents and AI’s threat to public life. I’m not sure if I’m at the point where I think kids should be banned from AI use entirely, but I absolutely believe that kids should be kept away from any form of AI companion. Turkle makes a compelling argument that minors are especially vulnerable because they are still forming their attachment templates, social skills, and identities, and I think everyone should be invested in making sure that AIs don’t take over that process.
––As a psychotherapist, I had a mixed reaction to Turkle’s chapter on my profession. I disagree with her that AI therapists should be avoided by default, and I think it’s likely that bounded-protocol therapy models will play a critical role in the future of mental health care. Of course I still hope there’s room for human therapists like myself, and while I do think that AI therapists should be off-limits for kids, we shouldn’t deny adults the option for an AI therapist if they want one. I agree with Turkle that we should be worried about client autonomy and dependence. A good therapist will work hard to help their clients develop the skills to eventually terminate therapy and live healthily without continued support, and we should demand the same from AI therapists. This could end up being in conflict with the bottom lines of AI therapy providers, so caution here is warranted.
––Turning now to my critiques of Artificial Intimacy, I think the book is too one-sided in a way that undermines Turkle’s credibility. She effectively highlights misuses of AI that are genuinely disturbing, but every chapter feels tailored to a predetermined conclusion rather than grounded in balanced scholarship on a hypercomplex and emerging field of research. She consistently presents judgmental interpretations of her interview subjects, often with the same “yes, they say it’s helping them, but I know better” tone. It’s condescending and elitist, and creates the impression that Turkle is incapable of considering the possibility that at least some human-AI relationships are net positive.
––Turkle only considers opposing viewpoints in passing and dismisses them too easily. She doesn’t give the idea of “relational pluralism”––that AIs will be additive to human-human relationships rather than competing with them––enough credence. Ironically, reading Artificial Intimacy actually made me more open to the relational pluralism argument because I kept trying to inject the nuance back into vignettes where Turkle seemed determined to flatten the person’s AI relationship into some version of a cautionary tale.
––I found myself almost completely rejecting Turkle’s take on how AI is changing the world of work. Turkle does point out the important problem that work has traditionally given people a sense of purpose, which we’ll need to address if AI takes over most or all jobs, but she doesn’t take seriously AI’s incredible potential for freeing up human creativity, banishing drudgery, and generating opportunities for new forms of meaningful labor that people will actually want to do rather than just doing whatever they have to to earn a paycheck and survive. Automating work that people don’t want to do is arguably the best use case for generative AI. While I do think we need to be careful with the speed of the job takeover and work to ensure that appropriate wealth redistribution mechanisms are in place to ease the transition, we should be welcoming this technology into the workplace rather than resisting it.
––I loved Turkle’s closing chapter, “Reclaiming the Real.” It’s true that, in this dynamic and scary moment, humans need to recommit to civic life and to our relationships with each other. I think the jury is out on whether the tension between artificial intimacy and human-human relationships is inherently zero-sum, or whether a positive-sum situation can emerge. But even if we’re headed toward a new horizon of relational pluralism, we should want human-human relationships to be both the norm and the gold standard for meeting our emotional, social, and developmental needs. Insofar as Turkle is championing this position, I’m with her.

Favorite Quotes:

My subject is artificial intimacy––AI that claims to care for us and proposes itself as a substitute for relationships with people. This is AI saying it will be there to sustain us as we try to meet the challenges of human life. That talking with us will be its vocation. That we will find comfort in its company and conversation. When we allow a chatbot to talk to us as though it were a caring person, when we use it as a best friend, lover, or therapist, we are in danger of losing something precious: the specificity of what we can give each other as humans. We’ve grown accustomed to treating programs as though they were people. Are we now prepared to treat people as though they were programs?

We love the objects we think with; we think with the objects we love. When we love our chatbots, we start to see the world through their eyes. We think of conversation as what they can deliver. We think of care as what they can provide. We think of empathy as what they can perform.

But chatbots can’t be empathic partners because they haven’t lived a human life. They don’t experience love. They don’t fear illness and death. They don’t know what it’s like to start out small and dependent and grow up so you’re in charge of your own life, but still feel many of the insecurities you knew when you were little. Without a body, they have no standing to talk about pain, fear, loss, joy, or passion. And they have no stake in our social world––our ability to live and work together in the real. (xvii-xviii)

Life on the screen changed our minds and hearts by making three promises. You can put your attention wherever you want it to be. You will always be heard. And you will never be alone. The promises were so compelling that we turned away from each other. Now chatbots extend the triple promise. If social media came for our attention, artificial intimacy comes for our capacity for attachment. When you talk to a chatbot, you have an audience that will always be on your side. You can have the feeling of a relationship without fear of judgment. People can’t make these promises. The chatbots and avatars of generative AI can. First we talked to each other. Then we talked to each other through machines. Now we talk directly to machines. (33)

Children should not be the consumers of relational AI, programs that pretend to have a self, capable of human-like connection. While the seductions of pretend empathy are dangerous for all of us, children have no defense; they are first-time learners. When an AI says, “I’ll always be on your side,” adults, hopefully, have had a lifetime of experiences that help them put that kind of comment into perspective. Adults have the experience of being connected to a person who accompanies them to a doctor’s appointment or stocks a refrigerator after a death in the family. Children haven’t had that. (80)

Why do we think a program could be anything other than alien? No matter how advanced an AI gets, it can only be ever more brilliant at faking human subjectivity. And what if an AI somehow develops its own inner life, with its own desires? No AI will have lived a human life, so it will not have had the experiences that allow humans to understand and find meaning in each other’s stories. As AI becomes a “subject,” it will assert itself as an alien. That is not to say that it won’t be interesting to talk to many species of chatbots. But when it comes to love, they are categorically the wrong partners. (116)

There is so much to say about AI and professional life. It’s changing who’s going to have a job and who won’t. It’s changing every aspect of management, leadership, and productivity. But work has an intimate dimension as well. At its best, work confirms a sense of identity and self-esteem. It gives us the opportunity to connect with our capacity for creativity and mastery. When we delegate tasks to AI, we risk losing these opportunities. (125-6)

Loss is the tragic motor of human development, the template for growth. (151)

The goal of therapy is for the patient to leave feeling more autonomous than before. Working with chatbots has had the opposite effect on Naomi, Emma, and Randyn. None of them can imagine life without the chatbot partner. (166-7)

Essig holds on to the belief that we can discipline ourselves to see chatbots as “objects that are not objects and subjects that are not subjects.” I think there has to be another choice––one that rejects the notion that chatbots are subjects of any sort. Chatbots are objects pretending to be subjects––and pretending is the very thing that therapists try to get patients not to do.

But I understand Essig’s reaction. As a clinician, he wants to be part of a conversation that accepts the world his patients live in, a world that includes more and more people having relationships with programs. The problem with my position is that if I say that artificial intimacy should not be in the repertoire of therapeutic relationships, I may be right, but irrelevant. (170)

You can train an AI to take a political position, but for the AI, it’s all theoretical. No program has a stake in the issues that face human communities: access to health care, educational opportunities, garbage collection, clean water, a minimum wage. When we spend a lot of time talking to voices with no interest in our communities, we lose interest as well. The idea of public life starts to feel abstract. As we lose the idea of a public, we unlearn the words with which to speak about the common good. We unlearn words like rights, responsibilities, representation, privacy. (207)

I’ve made the argument that it’s a losing game to take a thing as an intimate. You can enjoy a chatbot as a marvel, as a spectacle, you can improve the ways you use it as a tool, but when you say you are in a relationship with it, that’s out of its lane.

In retrospect, I could tell how we got here as a story of one step in front of the other. ELIZA was proof of concept. Tamagotchis showed that we were ready, with the smallest provocation, to love what we cared for. Social media made it seem natural to talk to each other through machines. Then came chatbots, and we’re talking directly to machines. But the fact that I could tell this story does not make where we have ended up any less extraordinary.

Now, I argue, against all odds, that we change course. First, we need to understand our vulnerability to chatbots. Then, mindful, we can devise a more intentional relationship with them. In therapy, when we consider our self-destructive behavior, the first step is to forgive ourselves and try to understand why we act against our best interest. The more we recognize our vulnerability to the virtual, the more we’ll be able to commit to the real.

But we’re finding it hard to commit to the real. Chatbots are appealing not only because of what they promise, but also because of what we’ve allowed to fall into disrepair––our care for each other and our commitment to our communities. All this neglect is part of our state of emergency. So, it won’t be enough to keep the programs in line. We need to address our withdrawal from each. (215-6)

Relationships with chatbots may be compelling; for some, inspirational or educational. But they don’t teach us what we need to know about the give and take of real relationships, or the friction, risk, and complexities of love. They don’t show us how to deal with loss by internalizing what is gone. They take on work assignments but don’t care if we have a sense of mastery or agency. They are good at keeping us busy, but can’t give us a sense of place. And they don’t teach us about empathy, or about human lives that are always embodied, social, and lived in shades of gray.

To say all this about chatbots does not diminish their importance. It puts them in their place. (218)

This review was originally published on my blog, Words&Dirt.

[Brian Shevory · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just came across an article from The Atlantic that focused on the work of Gad Saad and his belief about the toxic nature of empathy that is leading to the decline of “the west”, Saad, who holds a doctorate in marketing, seems to take a zero sum approach to empathy, where the ability to share feelings and relate to others, once held as a true sign of one’s humanity or appreciation for life, has now become toxic and woke. While it seems that Saad is more concerned with empathy in policies and regulations, his belief in empathy as toxic and destructive has received much attention from right wingers and what Gil Durán has nicknamed the Nerd Reich, a band of technofascists whose desire for efficiency and control have led to world wars. While Saad’s views on empathy are bizarre and misanthropic, they are gaining, probably for many of the reasons that Sherry Turkle has investigated our relationships with technology for nearly 50 years. In her latest book, Artificial Intimacy: What We Become When We Talk to Machines, Turkle treads new ground in the area of human machine intersection, but still manages to investigate the deleterious effects that technology has on our ability to communicate, to open up and become vulnerable, to relate, and to empathize with others. In past books, Turkle has investigated how technology like social media, email, and text messaging impacts our abilities to have conversations or communicate our feelings or ideas, or how digital toys often take the place of real relationships for children, blurring their schema for not only living things but also relationships. In this book, Turkle examines many of these same problematic outcomes, but she is looking at how chatbots and AI have impacted several areas of human relationships, connectivity, creativity, and thinking.
Even if you’ve never read Turkle’s other books or are familiar with her research, this is a great book to start with as the subject, artificial intelligence, is at the forefront of the news and seems to be an inescapable part of our online and digital experiences. However, what I found most fascinating in this book was Turkle’s interviews and documentation of how others are using chatbots in their daily lives. As an educator, I was glad to see that Turkle takes a constructivist and humanist approach to analyzing the participants’ use of AI, examining not only it’s impact on their abilities to think and classify information, but more significantly how AI dependency might impact their relationships with others. Through using theoretical frameworks from developmental psychologists like Erik Erikson and Jean Piaget, Turkle notes that prior developmental milestones and markers of cognition and identity development may be bypassed or unresolved which may have significant implications for individuals and society as they opt out of tasks that may be challenging, difficult, or even confrontational. As Turkle reminds readers with Erikson’s theory in particular, the developmental stages are not always resolved in a linear fashion, but we often face these conflicts throughout our lives. While resolution often results in a positive development in our authentic selves or identity, an unresolved conflict may have a detrimental impact on our psyche, leading to issues in identity diffusion, mistrust, and even despair. Proponents of AI claim that it leads to efficiency and an ability to personalize our interests and learning, yet Turkle’s own experiences documenting the obsequiousness of AI and several popular chat programs show that its demonstration of feelings or emotions are shallow and misleading. She also reminds readers that human relationships and learning are messy and not easily coded or refined by altering a sequence in a program. Rather, relationships and learning take time, patience, empathy, and determination, characteristics that many in the tech industry suggest that we bypass in order to bring us short-term satisfaction or joy that eventually leaves us isolated and alone and possibly with misguided ideas about relating to other people. In fact, I was surprised to read how many individuals that Turkle met with who repeatedly opted for digital relationships with chatbots because they are easier to manage and control and do not offer the give-and-take negotiation that is an essential part of growing a relationship. Another important factor that Turkle stresses is the role of the pandemic in accelerating the move towards chatbots as a kind of replacement for human relationships. She notes her own challenges with the limited connections that social distancing enabled, and presents the turn towards digital relationships with AI as part of a result of the social isolation from the pandemic. Yet, Turkle’s own research on our relationships with technology also indicates that this was an inevitable destination as one of her books, 2011’s Alone Together is subtitled Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. While much of her prior research examines children and the elderly and how the use of technology presents them with a simulated connection that they often accept as real. Yet, Artificial Intimacy touches all areas of human relationships, work, and life, examining how people from across different communities and backgrounds have all begun to replace real, human relationships with artificial intelligence.
Turkle frames this simulated connection through artificial intelligence as an emergency that has further enhanced anxiety and stress while also delaying typical markers of adulthood like intimacy and trust. She also documents case studies of AI that have done harm to children and adolescence, and how tired and time-constrained parents sometimes turn to AI to fulfill their parenting duties, or how children respond to AI-enabled devices like Alexa or Siri. Turkle reminds readers that while we may gain efficiency, easy answers, and even short-lasting pleasure or joy, it often comes at the expense of our privacy and possibly our identities, ability to trust, initiative, or intimacy. While the chapters on childhood and adolescence are concerning about how AI is impacting developmental milestones, I found the chapters looking at love and work even more shocking. Learning more about how people depend on AI for companionship and work skills opened up new insights into how AI is replacing these areas of our lives and making individuals less able to confront the typical challenges of life. There were two other chapters that also looked at how AI is becoming more of a part of therapy and how people (and companies) are using AI to manage mourning. I found these last two chapters equally concerning and somewhat disturbing. It seems that AI would be counterintuitive to therapeutic practices, especially those in psychoanalysis and Rogerian therapies, but it seemed like therapists and individuals who Turkle interviewed were of the belief that AI’s use in therapy was inevitable and would bring benefits. While therapists viewed its use as a means to provide further insights into analyzing patterns, dreams, and suggesting treatments or practices, patients seemed to appreciate the accessibility that AI therapists provide in relation to cost, time, and customization. As Turkle noted in some of her research participants, AI therapists don’t necessarily challenge these patients, often allowing patients to dictate the terms. What was also surprising was that not all companies promoting AI therapy need to issue disclaimers either. The chapter on mourning was also shocking to read, but also understanding. As Turkle notes, accepting death is one of the most challenging tasks of being a human, but it allows us to resolve the grieving process. Not accepting death creates a sense of melancholy on the individual level. AI companies have begun to exploit the desire to address death by creating digital avatars and AI-recreations of loved ones by uploading text messages, emails, videos, photos and other digital documents. Not only does it raise moral and ethical concerns, but Turkle notes the issues of privacy and consent, as most likely the deceased have not provided consent. Turkle’s research suggests that this willingness to revive the dead in an unliving manner prevents us from grieving and healing. It’s this kind of disruption, the inability to resolve the conflicts of life that AI has facilitated in the past few years.
Artificial Intimacy is an important book that many people should read. It’s a book that is especially important for parents and teachers, as it can provide us with a better understanding of the risks and consequences that AI poses to our children and students. While Turkle raises alarms and calls AI dependency a state of emergency, the presentation of the book’s subjects and research participants is empathetic and understanding. Yet, she also calls on readers to reclaim the real and reject the artificial, noting how AI not only limits our relationships with others, but it also reduces our agency and decision making. We are outsourcing our lives with the promise of efficiency and customization. The cost is our privacy, our identity, and our minds. With the recent attacks on empathy and the stress of efficiency, Turkle’s work and analysis throughout her career and this book in particular are relevant and meaningful. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Little, Brown, and Company and NetGalley for sharing an advanced copy of this wonderful and important book.

[Clare Mulroy · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books this year by a long shot. And not a typical read for me! “Artificial Intimacy” frightened me, enraged me, enthralled me and, most importantly, made me want to tell a dozen other people in my life about what I learned from it. ESSENTIAL reading in 2026.

[Emma Hinkle · Rating 3 out of 5]

As AI continues to permeate our world and we engage with AI, we are being transformed whether we realize it or not. Turkle draws on her rich sociology background to explore how AI (which she terms as 'chatbots') affects different realms (eg, childhood, work, therapy, etc). The book is full of questions for why we have flung our society so headlong into AI without considering the consequences.

I wanted to like this book more than I did. The topic was absolutely fascinating, but the execution of this book fell a bit flat for me. Turkle is clearly anti-AI and doesn't provide balance for cases where AI can be incorporated. In some of the chapters Turkle presented case study after case study without taking the time to interpret the studies and what she thought we should get out of them. A reader can do that, but the value Turkle provides is her expertise of interpretation. She made a lot of great points about how the goal of AI is to keep us engaged which is why such therapeutic, affirming language is used. The chapter on 'Childhood' was particularly well done and sobering.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the eARC.

[Ryo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book for free in a Goodreads giveaway.

I don't go out of my way to use chatbots, it's really only when I do a Google search that I even interact with them at all. So I went into this book without having much enthusiasm for AI chatbots, and I definitely came out of it without much, either. I do wish that the author were more balanced in pointing out some of the positives of AI, however.

Sherry Turkle talks about how AI chatbots have invaded so many aspects of modern life, with an accessible combination of scientific research and anecdotes from actual users. It's interesting as well as horrifying that chatbots have taken over this many parts of people's lives, from children's education and childrearing to therapy and even mourning the loss of loved ones. I found the stories of actual people (names changed) the most compelling and also frightening, like the people who have basically fallen in love with AI chatbots, or the person who is so dependent on AI for work that if they were told they could not use ChatGPT in a job, they wouldn't even consider it. And of course, the cases of suicide resulting from AI chatbot usage are heartbreakingly tragic.

On the other hand, there were places where I could not help but feel that the author needed to talk more about the positives of AI, like when there's no human equivalent available, and also possible solutions. For therapy, Turkle convincingly makes the case for human therapists, but what if someone can't afford it? What if they don't have insurance, or they can't find a suitable human therapist? Is talking to an AI chatbot worse than not talking to anyone? Or when there's increasing demands in the workplace, particularly tech companies where there's mandates that AI be used to generate code and the like, how do we as mere workers deal with this kind of environment?

This is an interesting look at how AI chatbots have attempted to emulate human emotions and empathy and even try to replace human relationships, but ultimately they cannot do any of these things authentically, and relying on them can be harmful. Turkle includes a lot of research as well as interesting anecdotes to make her case, and it's very accessible. I do wish that some of the positives of AI were explored more, as well as more solutions, to provide more balance.

[Madelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Turkle surveys the ways people of all ages fall into relationship with AI and argues that allowing ourselves to do so robs us of the full experience of humanity. The dangers she highlights here are imminent and terrifying; one of the most poignant examples Turkle discusses is the Israeli woman who uses ChatGPT to answer people’s questions about the genocide in Gaza so she does not have to think about it. I think this book could be a powerful conversation starter for anyone trying to figure out if or how to incorporate AI in their life.

There is an urgency to this book that I think is an inevitable consequence of the moment in which it was written, but that ultimately weakens its impact. Maybe it’s just her writing style, but Turkle seems frazzled here, jumping from one anecdote to the next without giving any of them space to breathe. There is a call to action, but it falls flat alongside the acknowledgment that most people seem uninterested in taking it up.

[Zita Carrancedo · Rating 3.25 out of 5]

Lo leí para mi tesis y pensé que iba a aburrirme pero lo acabé en 3 días y aprendí muchísimo. “Artificial intimacy” se trata de las relaciones y conversaciones que tenemos con AI y como no te preparan para el mundo ni te pueden ofrecer empatía o cercanía de verdad. Sherry ha investigado la “convivencia” de humanos y tecnología muy a fondo y siento que es la investigación más comprensiva de los efectos negativos. Ve desde el efecto de AI en niños, en relaciones con AI, en suicidios y enfermedades mentales, AI como terapia, AI en el trabajo… Algo que me llamó mucho la atención es lo que dice de desarrollo humano. Si niños o personas se acostumbran a hablar con un AI que les da validación inmediata y que “simula” una conversación dando la respuesta mas probable que le guste al usuario, las personas van a perder la habilidad de conectarse en la vida real. Para una conexión se necesita empatía y vulnerabilidad y eso es algo que AI no te puede dar. Puede llegar a ser un problema depender mucho de él y perder el criterio de que es una máquina.

[Natalie Brady · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is truly a must-read for the modern age, written by a woman who has been studying the relationship between humans and technology since the 70s. We desperately need to keep the world human, and Turkle makes a compelling case for the massive threat of generative AI on the very essence of our humanity. I can’t recommend it highly enough!


“Why would I do anything myself? This is how, little by little, we become supporting players in our own life.”

[jenna whitlow · Rating 5 out of 5]

essential reading. Seriously. Fuck AI.

[Rachel Lesler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here’s the thing: I agree with Sherry Turkle! Interacting with Large Language Models/Generative AI “chatbots” as friends, lovers, or therapists is really bad for humans and society. Unfortunately, her persuasive argument is so lacking that I found myself arguing back to the audiobook.

If you are not aware of how people are interacting with ChatGPT/Claude/etc, then this book will be extremely eye-opening in its wealth of anecdotal data. I just don’t know that Turkle will convince you that using these products in this way is detrimental.

[Ginni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rounding up from 3.5 stars because it's timely and important, but man, this book is short. It feels like it could have been a longform article. The bulk of the book is composed of anecdotes. They're interesting anecdotes, but I wanted more conclusions, more studies, more something.

Still, Turkle has gotten ahead of the curve with this book, and I'm glad it exists. This is another one of those technological advancements that we've charged headfirst into without adequate consideration of the consequences--not just globally or ethically, but personally.

(I received this book for free through a Goodreads giveaway.)

[Sarah Jensen · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

Silk Leaves, Frictionless Friends, and the Empathy Audit: A Review of Sherry Turkle’s Artificial Intimacy
Posted on Prairiefoxreads.com https://prairiefoxreads.blogspot.com/...

Book Details:

Title: Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines
Author: Sherry Turkle
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (Published September 29, 2026)
Format: Hardcover, 288 pages
Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Sociology, Science
The quiet hour of the morning before the rest of the house wakes up is my sanctuary from screens and notifications. While my husband and the kids were still fast asleep upstairs, I poured a steaming mug of dark roast coffee, settled into my reading chair beneath the trailing vines of my pothos and philodendrons, and let my cat curl up across my lap. With her warm weight anchored against my knees and a physical hardcover in my hands, it felt like the exact right grounding environment to dive into MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle’s urgent new release: Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines.

As the long-awaited follow-up to her landmark bestseller Reclaiming Conversation, this 288-page investigation shifts the focus from how smartphones fractured our attention to a far more existential threat: how conversational AI is coming for our capacity for human attachment.

Plastic Monstera vs. Living Roots: The Illusion of Care
Turkle’s central thesis is both simple and deeply unsettling. While we initially welcomed AI to handle utilitarian tasks—organizing calendars, planning travel routes, or crunching financial data—we have rapidly crossed a threshold into what she dubs “artificial intimacy.” Today, voice-enabled and text-based chatbots present themselves as best friends, romantic partners, and on-demand psychotherapists. Citing sobering recent data, Turkle notes that over 70% of teenagers and nearly a third of American adults have turned to AI for emotional support and companionship, with a growing number preferring synthetic relationships over messy human ones.

As someone who spends her weekends pruning, repotting, and fretting over an indoor jungle of houseplants, Turkle’s distinction between performed empathy and authentic empathy immediately made me think of faux plants versus living flora. You can buy a high-end silk monstera that looks pristine in a dark corner, never drops a yellowed leaf, never gets spider mites, and asks nothing of you. An AI companion operates the exact same way: it is programmed to validate you tirelessly, never get tired or grumpy, and never demand emotional reciprocity.

Yet a plastic plant doesn’t purify your air, and it never rewards your patience with the quiet thrill of a new unfurling leaf. When we settle for a machine’s algorithmic performance of care, Turkle argues, we start redefining human love and empathy down to what code can simulate.

Auditing the Human Lifecycle and the Danger of Zero Friction
In my day job, I spend my days looking at organizational systems, compliance protocols, and what happens when people rely too heavily on automated shortcuts instead of critical human judgment. In risk management, we know that when a system removes all active engagement from the operator, skill atrophy sets in almost immediately—so when a real crisis hits, the human in the loop no longer remembers how to fly the plane.

Turkle applies a similar diagnostic audit to our emotional lives, tracing our reliance on conversational machines across the entire human lifecycle, from a child’s earliest developmental attachments to how we process grief and mortality in old age. When a chatbot offers frictionless validation 24/7, it strips away the productive friction that actually builds psychological resilience. Machine relationships do not give us practice in tolerating awkward silences, apologizing after an argument, reading subtle body language, or sitting with another person’s shared vulnerability. By outsourcing our emotional struggles to an algorithm that only tells us what we want to hear, we risk losing the very muscles required for democracy, community, and deep human solidarity.

Parenting in the Age of Intimate Machines
As a mother and a wife, this book hit me right in the gut. Raising kids in the digital age already requires constant vigilance, and reading Turkle’s haunting case studies made me fiercely grateful for the chaotic, imperfect, and irreplaceable reality of family life.

Real intimacy requires risk. It requires showing up for your spouse when you’re both exhausted, navigating tough conversations with your kids when they make mistakes, and knowing that the person across the kitchen table cares about you because they have a heart that can break, too. (About halfway through a particularly poignant chapter on adolescent loneliness, my cat stretched out a paw to tap my wrist for chin scratches—a tiny, demanding, undeniably real bid for connection that no chatbot could ever replicate.)

Final Verdict
Artificial Intimacy is an essential, clear-eyed, and deeply compassionate wake-up call. Sherry Turkle doesn’t write as a technophobe demanding that we smash our computers; rather, she insists that AI should stay in its lane as a tool while we fiercely protect the sacred territory of human connection.

If you are a parent, an educator, or simply someone trying to stay grounded and present in an increasingly automated world, brew yourself a strong cup of coffee, put your phone in another room, and read this book.

Prairiefox Rating: 🦊🦊🦊🦊.5 / 5 Foxes

[Chelsey Pinto · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

I was very excited to read this work by Sherry Turkle, a much respected humanities of technology/psychology expert in her field, and professor at MIT. I first heard of the book on a podcast, otherwise I don't think I would have found it myself!

The book speaks to the various ways AI Chatbots, although she mostly focuses on ChatGPT, have become ubiquitous in our lives and what that dependency means for how we relate to others, how we think for ourselves, and how we feel our own heavy feelings. Spoiler, she explores how with AI Bots, we do not.

Written more from a psychosocial lens, the book uses multitudes of examples of people and how they use ChatGPT in their friendships, education, workplaces, grief process, and romantic relationships. The book follows loosely from the early 2020s with the earlier introductions of AI ChatBots and how they have been more and more refined, empathetic seeming, and thus more widely accepted and trusted. More addicting too. As a hard sciences person, I would have liked more data and statistical analysis about changes as AI becomes more insidious, but I recognize that the topics Turkle talks about, empathy, community, mastery, grief, love, and lust, are nearly impossible to quantify.

A few of her passages were particular striking, including the parallel between AI and Facebook. Originally tauted as a way to stay more connected and have fun with friends, Facebook left people feeling disconnected and lonely, AI promises to fulfill key roles in our lives - friends, lovers, therapists, doctors - we will be even less connected to those relationships leaning on AI so heavily. I was stunned to learn the fact that in 2025, 1 in 4 adults have had a relationship, friendship or otherwise ;) with a chatbot of some kind. One in four! I very much would love to know the male vs female ratio on this, as I have a feeling it is heavily skewed toward men - Male Loneliness Epidemic yowls its sad self visible again! Toward the end of the book Turkle offers some solutions for the problems she sees with AI, very similar to smart phones/social media in general. Keep out of kids's hands as long as possible, approach with caution, try to touch grass and build community in the real world. A steep ask as we are flooded with more and more AI, wanted or not.

Best Lines:
"...machine emotions and machine empathy. Researchers never explicitly say that machines have these things, but they can SHOW these things. And in a behaviorist culture, having and showing become the same thing."
"But the acceptance of untruth anywhere, prepares us for the corrosion of truth everywhere. We've accustomed ourselves to a world of post truth and 'alternative facts'."
"Because really, it's telling you that the place for you, is at your screen, alone. When people don't feel part of a community, they panic and look for reassurance. They seek simplicity and a strongman. Atomization creates the ground for authoritarianism. What prepares men for totalitarian domination is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience has become an everyday experience."

[Grace (alatteofliterature) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Little, Brown and Company for the ARC through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

This is a necessary and somewhat horrifying account of how chatbots are replacing human conversations and the consequences of these changes, especially on children.

The loneliness epidemic facing young people especially cannot be disentangled from this same group turning to various chatbots and virtual conversation partners in lieu of calling, texting, or meeting with true friends in person. Whether it’s for relationship advice or gathering thoughts prior to a doctor’s visit, every conversation with a chatbot removes an opportunity to build a relationship with a person who cares about you.

Multiple anecdotes in this book have the user expressing guilt over their use of these chatbots, most candidly, “Sometimes I find myself feeling bad because I feel like I don’t really think anymore. I just ask ChatGPT and it does it for me.”

This also affirmed my long-held belief that low-tech children’s education will (and has already) become the elite choice, while technology will be shoved in front of the “overcrowded classrooms, harried teachers….”

It’s evermore clear to me that everything we feed to technology dies a slow death, nearly irrecoverable as we allow technology to move forward for the sake of “progress.”

A good book overall. I do wish it had included more rigorous scientific accounts of affects to the brain, especially in children. I also didn’t appreciate the author referring to these chatbots collectively as “Chat” as if it’s a nickname for a person, something that she spoke against but still did for the entirety of the book.

[Olivia Adrianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Left a book event yesterday where one of the signs at the desks said “none of these books were made using generative AI” and I couldn’t have been happier to see it.

So thankful I got this ARC, and the perfect nonfiction for me to have in my rotation. Chatbots are terrifying and Turkle does not refrain from showcasing how scary it can become.

I think that beyond empathy, we have lost the ability to critically think, which we leave to chatbots and other AI websites to figure out for us. The grief and writing to love ones has me assessing any card I’ve gotten in the past year and wondering if AI wrote me my well-wishes.

I totally believe and see how this technology can also separate us and create a larger class divide, inside and outside the literal classroom.

I think the research is ongoing so it would be interesting if Turkle wrote a follow up based on the accounts, especially in youth as the assessments should be over years to see true results.

Thanks for the ARC!

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars!
This was absolutely fascinating and very well-researched! I have read a handful of non-fiction books about AI - the good, the bad, and the neutral. But all of them only talk about how it will impact jobs, art, or how it will be used in various fields. This is the very 1st one that actually drilled down into how it's changing who we are as people and how we are using it to change how we deal with human problems like loss and loneliness. I especially loved the chapter about "grief tech" and people using chat bots to "bring back" their loved ones, something I didn't even know was an actual widespread application of AI right now. The author did an incredible job of presenting these cases with objectivity and I appreciated that she handled people with care who were using the AI in ways she didn't agree with - such as having a romantic relationship with the chatbot. I think this is a book that everyone should read because it really highlights the biggest problem with AI right now which is that it can cause us to lose vital pieces of our humanity. I hope the author writes more!

[Daniel Holland · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gave up on this book after 60 pages. I saw the title at a book store and thought it was extremely timely given my concern about AI and how it will impact our society.

The beginning was promising with a good orientation on the issues and Turkle’s very impressive background studying the relationship of computers to humans and our culture.

My problem was that the writing deteriorated to what felt like a sermon that just needed repeated “amens” from the reader. This got old really quick. There were confusing references to names and content further back in the book. There were stories and quotes out of the blue with minimal context, seemingly boiled down for readability. But there needs to be context and continuity for a book to hold together for me. I’m thinking this was a rush job and probably didn’t have sufficient time /effort for good editing. There is an extensive notes section, so the background information is obviously available.

I respect Turkle’s title and commitment to this very important topic, but I feel it deserves a better-written book.

[Jed Walker · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

This is the right book at the right time from the right author. Turkle has been studying and writing about this subject as a true expert for decades. In the midst of all the AI hyperbole, her insights stand out as she comprehensively describes the real cultural shifts we're experiencing.

Initially, public fear centered on AI's disruption of the marketplace, but as Turkle proves throughout this important book, the real crisis is relational. Like any new technology, AI has the capacity to be an exceptional tool. But without careful consideration, it has the potential to be destructive.

The book is far more compelling in describing the problem than in providing solutions, but the depth of insight makes it an important read.

[Olivia Rocca · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

Real life is so much better than anything we can do with a chatbot. Though I've been skeptical of chatbots since forever this really solidified it like holy shit, even using it for work is so bad for you. She shares an anecdote in this about an author who uses chatg*t to determine which shoes her character should be wearing in a specific scene, and it just reminds me how in awe I am of the real writerly FREAKS that we're so lucky to have. Like how BEE recited 500 brand names and products in American Psycho just off the dome -- we are losing recipes.

I knowwwwww this is psychoanalytic and not necessarily super focused on the economic/societal conditions that make chatbots so appealing, but I do wish there was some more detail on that. I think she used the term atomization once, but I feel like that's really one of the huge roots of this issue. I'm sure someone has already beat that argument to death but I think predatory companies exist because of the culture that we live in, and although they contribute to upholding it, we ultimately need to look at how our society is organized and what about it allows these companies to exist and ASSAULT us so relentlessly.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Live in the real.


“Chatbots can’t be empathetic partners because they haven’t lived a human life. They don’t experience love. They don’t fear illness and death. They don’t know what it’s like to start out small and dependent and grow up so you’re in charge of your own life, but still feel many of the insecurities you knew when you were little. Without a body, they have no standing to talk about pain, fear, loss, joy, or passion. And they have no stake in our social world-our ability to live and work together in the real.”

“If social media came for our attention, artificial intimacy comes for our capacity for attachment.”

[Neha Satapathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating read (although mostly anecdotal) on the psychological implications of AI (and technology in general if you wish to extrapolate) on human cognitive development and behavior. The individual and collective consequences of a society that blindly embraces the rapid expansion of tech into the different domains of human life.

I would read this more as philosophy than a statistical argument. But I also find both equally important to think about.

[Jeff Finley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A much better, and more human case against AI and ChatGPT than any of the apocalyptic arguments. It's grounded in the reality of what it's actually like to use these tools and how it affects us. Really enjoyed Turkle's voice and anecdotes, you can tell she comes from experience and wisdom.

[Tina Panik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Turkle has been warning us for years about the dangers of technology, and this succinct volume reminds all of us to retain our humanity while we still can. Read this, and then talk about it—with everyone.

[Oana Ignat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a must-read in today's and yesterday's world! I highlighted so many quotes that I hope to use in my own research. I'm so happy I got to learn about this book at SCU's event.