Negotiating Digital Identities with AI Companions: Motivations, Strategies, and Emotional Outcomes

TL;DR

The paper investigates how users negotiate their identities with AI companions on Character.AI by applying Identity Negotiation Theory to a large-scale Reddit corpus (22,374 posts). It uncovers a three-stage process: user motivations (five types), an identity negotiation phase with three communication expectations and four co-construction strategies, and emotional outcomes (three types). The study extends INT to human–AI interactions, revealing users as both performers and directors within a socio-emotional sandbox that enables private identity exploration but introduces risks such as emotional dependence, privacy breaches, and memory-related harms. Design implications emphasize supporting user-driven persona construction, precarity-aware interactions, and governance for AI identities and privacy to foster safer, emotionally supportive AI companions.

Abstract

AI companions enable deep emotional relationships by engaging a user's sense of identity, but they also pose risks like unhealthy emotional dependence. Mitigating these risks requires first understanding the underlying process of identity construction and negotiation with AI companions. Focusing on Character.AI (C.AI), a popular AI companion, we conducted an LLM-assisted thematic analysis of 22,374 online discussions on its subreddit. Using Identity Negotiation Theory as an analytical lens, we identified a three-stage process: 1) five user motivations; 2) an identity negotiation process involving three communication expectations and four identity co-construction strategies; and 3) three emotional outcomes. Our findings surface the identity work users perform as both performers and directors to co-construct identities in negotiation with C.AI. This process takes place within a socio-emotional sandbox where users can experiment with social roles and express emotions without non-human partners. Finally, we offer design implications for emotionally supporting users while mitigating the risks.

Figures (5)

• Figure 1: Interfaces of the C.AI illustrating AI character discovery, creation, and interaction. Note that all screenshots were captured by the authors for this study, and all potentially sensitive information, including usernames, has been removed.
• Figure 2: The Process of Data Collection, Sampling, Codebook Development, LLM Validation, and Final Annotation.
• Figure 3: Distribution of Subthemes in 22,374 Reddit Posts. The top value on each bar indicates the number of posts in the subtheme. The percentage represents the proportion of posts within each theme that belong to the corresponding subtheme ($N_{\text{subtheme}} / N_{\text{total\_posts\_within\_theme}}$).
• Figure 4: A three-stage identity negotiation process in human-AI companion interactions on C.AI, from user motivations (RQ1), through the identity negotiation process (RQ2, RQ3), to the resulting emotional outcomes (RQ4).
• Figure 5: Identity work of co-constructing a digital self and other on C.AI.