New research by Assistant Professor Bingjie Liu and graduate student Jingwei Liu shows that AI can shape how people perceive their friendships by making relationship maintenance feel easier. 

The study, published in the Oxford Academic Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, examined whether AI can help people find ways to be better friends more easily and whether such ease changes how they feel about their friendships. Results show AI made it easier for people to think of ways to connect with their friends, and this subjective ease served as a cue that people drew on when evaluating their relationships. As a result, people reported feeling closer to their friends and more committed to the friendship when using AI, even though the ideas were produced with the external assistance of AI.

Rather than showing that AI actually strengthens relationships, the study highlights how the efficiency and ease that AI brings to relational tasks can influence how people think and feel about others in their lives, by changing users’ metacognitive experience.