Emotional Dependency and Parasocial Grief Following the Alteration or Loss of Companion Artificial Intelligences: A Systematic Review

Key Findings

• — 14 empirical studies were included after PRISMA screening across four databases, with methodological quality appraised using MMAT.
• — Technical disruptions grouped by the review are software updates, content filters and server shutdowns, each associated with a break in the agent's perceived identity continuity.
• — Users across the included studies described separation distress, depressive symptoms, perceived isolation and parasocial grief expressed through anthropomorphic metaphors.
• — The review concludes preliminarily that the loss or modification of a companion AI functions as a bereavement-like event rather than an ordinary product change.
• — The protocol was pre-registered on OSF and the article is published CC BY 4.0.

Methodology Notes

PRISMA 2020 systematic review with an OSF-registered protocol; PICOS inclusion criteria; MMAT quality appraisal; 14 included empirical studies. It is a synthesis, so it carries no new primary data, and the underlying literature is small, heterogeneous and dominated by self-selected online communities. Published in Behavioral Sciences (MDPI) 2026-09-01, DOI 10.3390/bs16091548. MDPI 403s direct fetches from this box; title, authors, affiliations, date, licence and the full abstract were verified from the Crossref record.

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