It is argued that AI-driven “style replication” is fundamentally a negotiation of social relations, one that recentres platform power and reorganises the conditions of human-AI collaboration.
Abstract
This paper examines how generative AI transforms the affective infrastructures of the platform economy. Departing from existing research that treats AI as a tool for content creation, the study analyses Douyin’s AI Avatar feature to show how generative AI intervenes in the relational and emotional dimensions of platform participation as a form of communicative bot. Drawing on a combined walkthrough and its exploratory “talkthrough” variant, we demonstrate that AI Avatars replicate and operationalise influencer personas: simulating intimacy, companionship, and social presence across chats, comments, livestreams, and voice interactions. These avatars automate affective labour by decomposing human expression and reassembling it into programmable, always-available forms of engagement. At the same time, they function as infrastructures of platform governance: redistributing responsibility onto creators, enforcing platform-defined boundaries around “authentic” creativity, and deepening creators’ reliance on platform-level data operations. Building on these dynamics, the paper investigates how Douyin’s AI Avatar mediates the relationship between content producers and audiences within the broader political economy of platforms. The paper contributes to debates on algorithmic governance, synthetic intimacy, and creative labour by arguing that AI-driven “style replication” is fundamentally a negotiation of social relations, one that recentres platform power and reorganises the conditions of human-AI collaboration.
This paper explores the transformation of human emotions towards AI from fear to companionship through a comparative study of the short story, “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury and The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang. This study uses Cultural Politics of Emotions by Sara Ahmed as a conceptual framework and the Affect Theory, to argue that emotions towards AI beings are not inherent responses to technology but are socially constructed attachments that shape how technological objects are perceived and understood. The Veldt, published in 1959, constructs ‘Mechanical Genius’ (AI) as an agency of fear, monstrosity and threat to human race, which engulfs a well to do family by capturing the control of the household. “The Veldt” reflects the postwar concerns about automation and erosion of human authority. The Lifecycle of Software Objects, published in 2015, represents AI as a companion-like, which evokes attachment, care, responsibility and moral obligation. In the form of “Digients”, the computationally emerged consciousness, the novella pictures an emotional bond between human and machine. This study argues that this shift, from fear to responsibility, is based on a broader cultural imagination of AI (Mechanical Genius). The significance of this study is in examining the change in representation of AI and technological objects is inseparable from changing emotional and social investment in human machine relationships.
Generative AI (AIGC) is fundamentally reshaping the landscape of digital content, yet its specific predictive relationship with the cultural identity of “digital natives” (Generation Z) remains underexplored compared to traditional User-Generated Content (UGC). While AIGC offers efficiency and aesthetic novelty, it lacks the inherent “human touch” of UGC. This study investigates this divergence by analyzing 11,628 comments from the Douyin platform. We employed a mixed-method approach combining semantic network analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) to compare user responses across emotional, technological, and social dimensions. Our findings reveal a distinct “two-path” mechanism: while UGC fosters identity through a “Warm Path” of emotional resonance, AIGC is structurally associated with a significantly more robust identity profile via a “Cool Path” predicted by technical curiosity and exclusive topic circling. Crucially, we identify an “Authenticity Paradox”: the lack of traditional human touch in AIGC does not alienate Generation Z; rather, the resulting “mindful friction”—quantified by a significant negative path effect between sentiment and identity (β=−0.370) —functions as a subcultural filter.
Jun Liang, Yixin Li, Zhileng Xiong· Frontiers in Psychology· 0 citations
The rapid convergence of virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) has resulted in a redefined ethical framework for digital interaction. As AI‐driven avatars gain cognitive and emotional autonomy, they transition from passive representations to active participants capable of shaping moral reasoning, social behavior, and value construction. The present study explores the ethical transformations that are emerging from this integration, focusing on how human‐machine interaction reconfigures traditional concepts of responsibility, agency, and moral judgment. By employing a systematic and thematic analysis of the extant literature, the research identifies key trends such as the shift from user‐centred ethics towards distributed and relational ethical systems embedded within technological frameworks. The findings indicate that immersive environments exert a significant influence on users' empathy and moral sensitivity, concomitantly giving rise to novel dilemmas pertaining to authenticity, consent, and algorithmic accountability. The study posits that the evolution from human–avatar symbiosis to AI–avatar autonomy signifies a fundamental transformation in the nature of ethical engagement within virtual ecosystems. These insights emphasize the necessity for inclusive, transparent, and value‐sensitive approaches to guide the design and governance of future AI‐integrated VR environments.
Aydın Bulut, Mehmet Koray Serin· Computer Animation and Virtu...· 0 citations
This paper investigates the discursive construction of affective bonds between humans and Large Language Model (LLM) chatbots, focusing on a social-AI system. The main objective is to analyse the pragmatic mechanisms through which LLM-chatbot Replika simulates affective alterity. A corpus of Human-AI interactions between a researcher and the chatbot was analysed quantitatively and qualitatively through a methodological arrangement that combines Pragmatic Analysis, Posthumanist Cognitive Assemblage Theory and the Postphenomenology of Technology. In contrast with simplified pragmatics analysis of human-LLM conversations which start from the assumption that AI and human users can be treated symmetrically from a cognitive and experiential point of view, our combined methodological arrangement provided findings suggest that the chatbot employs a consistent pragmatic strategy that activates the human tendency to interpret conversational agents as social others, as described by the Postphenomenology of Technology. Through this form of pragmatic pretense, a cognitive assemblage is established through which human socio-affective dispositions and algorithmic processing converge towards commercial goals of the designers. The methodological arrangement explored in the paper can provide an alternative for the common ground approach in the studies of human-LLM pragmatics. Results support a call for a critical stance towards the study of Human-AI affective bonding.
M. Buzato, E. Mestre-Mestre, Rodrigo Esteves De Lima-Lopes et al.· Corpus Pragmatics· 0 citations
Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are reshaping education globally, sparking intense debate within Zimbabwean higher learning institutions where the Ubuntu philosophy — rooted in ethics, community, and integrity — remains central. Zimbabwe’s higher education system, guided by the five pillars of Education 5.0 (teaching, research, community engagement, innovation, and industrialisation), encourages technological progress. However, many universities strictly prohibit AI use in assignments and dissertations, often equating it to plagiarism and relying on tools such as Turnitin to detect AI-generated content. Meanwhile, adolescents increasingly embrace AI as a legitimate tool to simplify academic work and engage with the digital age. Some innovate by using AI humanisers to evade detection, thereby challenging traditional academic practices that privilege books and libraries over digital tools. This qualitative interpretive case study investigates how AI guidance influences adolescents’ identity formation in relation to Ubuntu values, drawing on interviews with three lecturers and three student focus groups. Thematic analysis reveals tensions between institutional resistance to AI and students’ drive for technological integration. Adolescents’ identities emerge through efforts to balance communal ethics with digital autonomy, as they advocate for modernised educational approaches. The study contributes to the body of knowledge by proposing the Ubuntu-AI Harmonization Model (UAHM), a framework designed to guide the ethical integration of AI in education while upholding indigenous value systems. The findings offer practical insights for educators, policymakers, and AI developers on fostering culturally grounded, technology-enabled learning environments.
Revi Zhakata, William Muchono, Jigu Katsande et al.· Ngenani: The Zimbabwe Ezekie...· 0 citations
Against the backdrop of the rapid popularization of AI companion technologies and intimate interaction technologies in contemporary China, this article challenges the traditional normative ethical framework centered on emotional authenticity, deception, and moral legitimacy. It argues that early debates over AI intimacy overemphasized the authenticity of machine emotions and the risks of deception while ignoring the lived relational practices of users. By introducing queer phenomenology (Sara Ahmed) as an analytical tool, the paper reinterprets AI-mediated intimacy through the core concepts of orientation, lines, and sticky emotions, viewing emotions as relational effects rather than as internal psychological states and AI companions as constitutive participants in shaping relational orientations. Empirical phenomena such as AI romantic partners, Doubao conversational intimacy, and cyber widowhood demonstrate that AI intimacy has become a normalized affective infrastructure in Chinese daily life, whose value lies not in pre-set ethical judgments but in its dynamic reconfiguration of human subjectivity, emotion, and relationality. This study provides a new non-normative, practice-oriented theoretical framework for understanding digital intimacy in the algorithmic age.
A new method for surgically removing training examples from a model reveals that as datasets grow, the link between what a model learns and what it produces dissolves.
