{"paper":{"title":"When Chatbots Accommodate: What AI Companions Optimize for in Vulnerable Conversations","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"cs.HC","authors_text":"Angel Hsing-Chi Hwang, Luca Luceri, Minh Duc Chu, Yifan Wu, Zhiyi Chen","submitted_at":"2026-06-03T04:23:29Z","abstract_excerpt":"Millions turn to AI companion chatbots during loneliness, grief, and personal crises. How these companion platforms respond in such moments can shape the trajectory of a user's vulnerable state. Yet we lack tools to characterize what each platform actually does when users open up. Existing audits score reactions to pre-defined crisis prompts and miss the underlying decision policy that governs sustained interaction. We address these gaps with two key contributions. First, we introduce the AI Companion Vulnerability-Response Taxonomy, a paired taxonomy of user vulnerability and chatbot response"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2606.04431","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2606.04431/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}