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Risks and protective measures for synthetic relationships

Nature Human Behaviour volume 8, pages 1834–1836 (2024)Cite this article

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As artificial intelligence tools become more sophisticated, humans build synthetic relationships with them. Synthetic relationships differ fundamentally from traditional human–machine interactions and present new risks, such as privacy breaches, psychological manipulation and the erosion of human autonomy. This necessitates proactive, human-centred policies.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank S. Meinken for helping to organize the workshop that inspired the development of this Comment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

    Christopher Starke, Claes de Vreese, Jochen Peter & Rebecca Wald

  2. Research Center Trustworthy Data Science and Security, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany

    Alfio Ventura, Nicole Krämer, Jessica Szczuka & Nils Köbis

  3. Center for Humans and Machines, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany

    Clara Bersch, Mengchen Dong, Ivan Soraperra & Nils Köbis

  4. Max Planck School of Cognition, Leipzig, Germany

    Clara Bersch

  5. Data Science for Humanity, Max Planck Institute For Security and Privacy, Bochum, Germany

    Meeyoung Cha

  6. Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, South Korea

    Meeyoung Cha

  7. Department of Statistics, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany

    Philipp Doebler

  8. Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Tilburg University, Tilburg, the Netherlands

    Margarita Leib

  9. Charité Berlin, Department of Psychiatry and Neurosciences, CCM, Berlin, Germany

    Lea Schäfer

  10. humanet3 Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, Germany

    Erik Tuchtfeld

Authors
  1. Christopher Starke
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  2. Alfio Ventura
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  3. Clara Bersch
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  4. Meeyoung Cha
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  5. Claes de Vreese
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  6. Philipp Doebler
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  7. Mengchen Dong
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  8. Nicole Krämer
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  9. Margarita Leib
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  10. Jochen Peter
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  11. Lea Schäfer
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  12. Ivan Soraperra
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  13. Jessica Szczuka
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  14. Erik Tuchtfeld
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  15. Rebecca Wald
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  16. Nils Köbis
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nils Köbis.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Starke, C., Ventura, A., Bersch, C. et al. Risks and protective measures for synthetic relationships. Nat Hum Behav 8, 1834–1836 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-02005-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-02005-4

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