Women, Artificial Intelligence, and Intimate Relationships: A Qualitative Documentary Study of Social, Emotional, and Cultural Transformations

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly entering domains of companionship, emotional disclosure, romantic interaction, and everyday relationship support. These developments raise gender-specific questions about emotional labour, autonomy, dependency, privacy, cultural norms, and the commercial design of intimate technologies. This qualitative research study investigates how women’s AI-mediated intimacy is represented and socially constructed across contemporary documentary data. Guided by an interpretivist paradigm, the study uses qualitative document analysis and reflexive thematic analysis. Peer-reviewed empirical studies and authoritative documentary sources relevant to women, gender, AI companionship, human–AI relationships, attachment, privacy, agency, and cultural context were purposively selected as the data corpus. Documents were treated as qualitative data rather than merely as background literature. Analysis proceeded through repeated familiarisation, initial coding, comparison of convergent and divergent accounts, iterative theme development, and reflexive interpretation. Five interconnected themes were generated: (1) AI as a perceived emotional companion; (2) transformation of intimacy and romantic expectations; (3) emotional attachment, agency, and dependency; (4) gendered AI, emotional labour, and cultural negotiation; and (5) privacy, surveillance, manipulation, and ethical boundaries. The findings show that AI-mediated intimacy is neither inherently emancipatory nor inherently harmful. Personalisation and continuous availability may create spaces for disclosure, experimentation, and perceived support, while the same affordances can intensify attachment, reproduce gender stereotypes, alter expectations of responsiveness, and convert intimate disclosure into commercial data. Women’s agency is therefore conditional, shaped simultaneously by user choice, cultural meanings, platform architectures, and data practices. The study conceptualises AI-mediated intimacy as a sociotechnical and culturally situated form of relationality and identifies implications for gender-sensitive design, privacy, relational transparency, and future primary qualitative research.