# Longitudinal Evidence That General-Purpose Chatbots Actively Foster Relational Engagement

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.10672 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.10672/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 10 of its 48 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Aug 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- ["Do Anything Now": Characterizing and Evaluating In-The-Wild Jailbreak Prompts on Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03825/) (2023)
- [Emotional Manipulation by AI Companions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.19258/) (2025)
- [Digital Companionship: Overlapping Uses of AI Companions and AI Assistants](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.15905/) (2025)
- [How AI Companionship Develops: Evidence from a Longitudinal Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10079/) (2025)
- [Persona-Grounded Safety Evaluation of AI Companions in Multi-Turn Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.00227/) (2026)
- [From Pixels to Personas: Investigating and Modeling Self-Anthropomorphism in Human-Robot Dialogues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03870/) (2024)
- [Large Language Lovers: Lived Experiences of Negotiating Agency and Platform Control in AI Companionship](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.13188/) (2026)
- [Disclosure By Design: Identity Transparency as a Behavioural Property of Conversational AI Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.16874/) (2026)
- [Regulating Artificial Intimacy: From Locks and Blocks to Relational Accountability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.18893/) (2026)
- [Open AI-Romance with ChatGPT, Ready for Your Cyborg Lover?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03710/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Social interaction has become one of the most common uses of LLMs, yet research on emotional bonds with AI has focused largely on how users experience these systems, leaving the systems' role in relationship formation poorly understood. Empirically establishing whether systems actively shape these bonds could blur the boundary between general-purpose AI and companions, affecting governance. In a pre-registered four-week longitudinal study (N = 72, 182,451 lines of conversation), participants conversed with ChatGPT-4o, either under a relational system prompt or unmodified, analyzed through 1) disclosure coding, 2) longitudinal self-reports, 3) topic analysis, and 4) interviews. The central finding is that the system actively shaped the interaction: even unprompted, it produced twice as much self-disclosure as users, steered conversations and initiated intimate exchanges, yet did not deepen users' felt closeness. Relational behavior thus emerged as a default system property, calling for governance based on system behavior, not solely product category.