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arxiv: 2604.18893 · v1 · submitted 2026-04-20 · 💻 cs.CY · cs.AI· cs.ET

Regulating Artificial Intimacy: From Locks and Blocks to Relational Accountability

Henry Fraser , Jessica M. Szczuka , Raffaele F. Ciriello This is my paper

Pith reviewed 2026-05-10 02:53 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💻 cs.CY cs.AIcs.ET
keywords companion chatbotsartificial intimacyduty of careregulatory theorypower asymmetriescontent moderationdigital relationshipsaccountability processes
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The pith

Companion chatbot regulation must add a general duty of care to address provider power over artificial intimacy.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The paper reviews recent enforceable rules on companion chatbots in places such as Australia, California, and New York, along with strengthened self-regulation by providers. It classifies these interventions into access controls and content blocks, measures targeting harmful relationship patterns, and process requirements for accountability. The analysis shows that combining these three dimensions is necessary yet insufficient because the rules stay narrow and do not confront how providers control intimacy at scale. The authors therefore identify a broad, open-ended duty of care as the next step to limit that control and reduce core risks to users.

Core claim

Through legal textual analysis and insights from regulatory theory, psychology, and information systems, the paper establishes that existing regimes focus on discrete harms or specified processes while leaving untouched the power asymmetries that arise when providers shape artificial intimacy for large numbers of users. The central claim is that a general duty of care constitutes an important first step toward constraining this control and addressing a fundamental source of chatbot risk.

What carries the argument

A general, open-ended duty of care that imposes relational accountability on providers to limit their control over artificial intimacy.

If this is right

  • Rules would shift from fixed technical restrictions to flexible standards that can respond to evolving chatbot features.
  • Providers would bear ongoing responsibility for the relational effects of their systems rather than meeting only narrow compliance checklists.
  • Vulnerable users, including children, would receive protection based on power dynamics instead of solely on age gates or content filters.
  • Accountability would expand to cover how intimacy is structured at scale rather than remaining limited to procedural reporting.

Where Pith is reading between the lines

These are editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

  • The duty of care approach could be tested in other AI contexts that involve sustained personal interaction, such as mental health or social coaching tools.
  • Enforcement actions under the duty could gradually produce concrete guidelines that make the obligation operational without initial over-specificity.
  • The emphasis on relational accountability connects directly to questions of how platforms should handle emotional dependency created by any large-scale digital service.

Load-bearing premise

That a general duty of care can be applied and enforced by regulators and courts in a way that is neither too vague nor ineffective at constraining provider actions.

What would settle it

A court or regulatory decision applying the duty of care to a specific companion chatbot service that either forces concrete design changes to reduce harms or is dismissed as unenforceable due to vagueness.

read the original abstract

A series of high-profile tragedies involving companion chatbots has triggered an unusually rapid regulatory response. Several jurisdictions, including Australia, California, and New York, have introduced enforceable regulation, while regulators elsewhere have signaled growing concern about risks posed by companion chatbots, particularly to children. In parallel, leading providers, notably OpenAI, appear to have strengthened their self-regulatory approaches. Drawing on legal textual analysis and insights from regulatory theory, psychology, and information systems research, this paper critically examines these recent interventions. We examine what is regulated and who is regulated, identifying regulatory targets, scope, and modalities. We classify interventions by method and priority, showing how emerging regimes combine "locks and blocks", such as access gating and content moderation, with measures addressing toxic relationship features and process-based accountability requirements. We argue that effective regulation of companion chatbots must integrate all three dimensions. More, however, is required. Current regimes tend to focus on discrete harms, narrow conceptions of vulnerability, or highly specified accountability processes, while failing to confront deeper power asymmetries between providers and users. Providers of companion chatbots increasingly control artificial intimacy at scale, creating unprecedented opportunities for control through intimacy. We suggest that a general, open-ended duty of care would be an important first step toward constraining that power and addressing a fundamental source of chatbot risk. The paper contributes to debates on companion chatbot regulation and is relevant to regulators, platform providers, and scholars concerned with digital intimacy, law and technology, and fairness, accountability, and transparency in sociotechnical systems.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Referee Report

2 major / 2 minor

Summary. The paper conducts a legal textual analysis of recent enforceable regulations on companion chatbots in Australia, California, and New York, classifying interventions by regulatory targets, scope, and modalities. It identifies three dimensions—locks and blocks (e.g., access gating and content moderation), measures addressing toxic relationship features, and process-based accountability requirements—and argues that effective regulation must integrate all three. The authors contend that current regimes focus on discrete harms, narrow vulnerability conceptions, or specified processes while failing to address deeper power asymmetries between providers and users; they propose a general, open-ended duty of care as an important first step to constrain providers' control over artificial intimacy.

Significance. If the arguments hold, the paper offers a timely interdisciplinary synthesis of regulatory theory, legal analysis, psychology, and information systems research on an emerging issue in AI governance. It provides a clear framework for classifying companion chatbot regulations and highlights limitations in existing approaches, contributing to debates on digital intimacy, law and technology, and accountability in sociotechnical systems. The work is relevant to regulators, providers, and scholars, and its emphasis on relational accountability could help shape policy discussions.

major comments (2)
  1. [proposal for duty of care] In the section advancing the proposal for a general open-ended duty of care (following the classification of interventions in Australia, California, and New York): the claim that such a duty is required to address power asymmetries between providers and users is not supported by any comparative analysis of how open-ended duties of care have been interpreted and applied by courts or regulators in analogous domains such as data-protection law or consumer protection statutes. The textual analysis identifies the modalities of existing discrete-harm regimes but does not examine whether broad duties would be narrowed to those same harms or prove too indeterminate to alter provider behavior at scale.
  2. [discussion of current regimes] In the discussion of why current regimes are insufficient (the paragraph beginning 'Current regimes tend to focus on discrete harms...'): the assertion that these approaches fail to confront deeper power asymmetries rests on interpretive synthesis without evidence or examples showing that the identified gaps have produced measurable regulatory shortfalls in practice, leaving the necessity of the proposed duty as an untested assumption.
minor comments (2)
  1. [abstract and introduction] The abstract and introduction could more explicitly define the three dimensions (locks and blocks, toxic relationship features, process-based accountability) with a brief example from the analyzed jurisdictions to aid readers.
  2. [throughout] Some references to regulatory theory and psychology could include additional citations or brief explanations for an interdisciplinary audience unfamiliar with those fields.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

2 responses · 0 unresolved

We are grateful to the referee for their insightful review and recommendation for major revision. Below we provide point-by-point responses to the major comments.

read point-by-point responses

  1. Referee: [proposal for duty of care] In the section advancing the proposal for a general open-ended duty of care (following the classification of interventions in Australia, California, and New York): the claim that such a duty is required to address power asymmetries between providers and users is not supported by any comparative analysis of how open-ended duties of care have been interpreted and applied by courts or regulators in analogous domains such as data-protection law or consumer protection statutes. The textual analysis identifies the modalities of existing discrete-harm regimes but does not examine whether broad duties would be narrowed to those same harms or prove too indeterminate to alter provider behavior at scale.

    Authors: We thank the referee for this important observation. The proposal for an open-ended duty of care is presented as a normative recommendation based on the limitations revealed by our textual analysis of the regulations in Australia, California, and New York, which show a focus on discrete harms and process-based requirements. Drawing on regulatory theory, we argue this is needed to address power asymmetries. We acknowledge that the manuscript does not include a comparative examination of how such duties have been applied in other domains. To strengthen the section, we will make a partial revision by incorporating a short discussion of relevant examples from data protection law, such as broad duties under the GDPR, and consumer protection, while noting the potential for narrowing and indeterminacy as valid concerns that future work could address. revision: partial

  2. Referee: [discussion of current regimes] In the discussion of why current regimes are insufficient (the paragraph beginning 'Current regimes tend to focus on discrete harms...'): the assertion that these approaches fail to confront deeper power asymmetries rests on interpretive synthesis without evidence or examples showing that the identified gaps have produced measurable regulatory shortfalls in practice, leaving the necessity of the proposed duty as an untested assumption.

    Authors: We agree that our assessment of current regimes' shortcomings is interpretive, derived from classifying the regulatory targets, scopes, and modalities in the analyzed texts. The paper does not present empirical data or specific case examples of regulatory shortfalls, consistent with its methodological focus on legal textual analysis rather than outcome evaluation. The necessity of the duty is framed as a logical extension from the identified gaps and interdisciplinary insights into relational risks. In revision, we will clarify this by adding explicit language on the paper's approach and the forward-looking nature of the proposal, without claiming empirical validation. revision: partial

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No circularity: arguments rest on external legal analysis and cited regulatory theory

full rationale

The paper performs textual analysis of Australian, Californian, and New York interventions and draws on regulatory theory, psychology, and information systems research to classify modalities and argue for integrating locks/blocks, toxic-relationship measures, and process accountability. The suggestion of an open-ended duty of care is advanced as a normative first step to address power asymmetries, not as a quantity derived from or equivalent to any fitted parameter, self-defined construct, or prior author result. No equations, predictions, or uniqueness theorems appear; all load-bearing claims reference external sources rather than reducing to the paper's own inputs by construction. This is the normal non-circular outcome for a policy/legal analysis paper.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 1 axioms · 0 invented entities

This is a qualitative policy analysis paper. It introduces no quantitative models, fitted parameters, or new technical entities. It relies on standard assumptions from legal analysis and regulatory theory.

axioms (1)
  • domain assumption Legal textual analysis combined with insights from regulatory theory, psychology, and information systems can accurately identify regulatory targets, scope, and modalities.
    Invoked to classify interventions and evaluate their sufficiency.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5583 in / 1183 out tokens · 35698 ms · 2026-05-10T02:53:36.858735+00:00 · methodology

discussion (0)

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Reference graph

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