The Dawn of Artificial Intimacy: Exploring Synthetic Closeness, Hybrid Identities, and Digital Companionship

In an era defined by rapid technological advancements, we're witnessing the dawn of a new phenomenon: artificial intimacy. This term signifies the emerging connections between humans and artificial intelligence entities, forged through the expansive realm of digital technology. As the pandemic expedited our migration towards online spaces for learning, working, and socialising, artificial intimacy has begun to reshape our social fabric.

Central to this exploration is the concept of synthetic closeness, an offshoot of artificial intimacy. Synthetic closeness encapsulates the increasingly nuanced relationships we're forming with AI entities, resulting from a hybridisation of our identities and social organisations. As cultural and structural changes intersect with human personas, our relational dynamics with ourselves, others, and the world are being redefined. This is spurred on by our brains and minds absorbing novel ways of communication, processing, and blending information through technologies.

As we delve further into the digital age, we're straddling two realities - the physical and the digital. Digital companionship and computational social matchmakers are growing elements of our lives. AI algorithms, learning from our online activities, are now replicating our patterns of social behaviour, extending to emotional responses. Artificial intimacy thus becomes a central discussion point in these contexts, opening up questions around identity, social constructs, and human-machine relationships.

However, it's important to acknowledge the ontological differences that set apart the human mind and AI systems. Machines lack the unique synaptic plasticity of the human brain and the relational reflexivity that characterises human interactions. According to Pierpaolo Donati, humanoid robots, despite advancements, cannot form 'relational subjects' akin to humans' relationships. Thus, the spectrum of artificial intimacy can never fully mirror the richness and complexity of human-human interaction (HHI), distinguishing it from human-robot interaction (HRI).

The notion of artificial intimacy also prompts us to reevaluate our definition of friendship. As Mathias Tistelgren posits, a genuine friendship requires volition, respect, and self-knowledge, traits currently beyond AI's reach. While social robots might form quasi-social relationships with humans as pseudo-persons, a full spectrum of emotions, intentions, and nuanced reactions still eludes them.

However, the journey towards artificial intimacy is steadily advancing, ushering us into an era of hybridisation – the blending of the real and the fictitious, the analog and the digital. Digital technology is altering our perceptions of self, relationships, and social structures, exemplified when individuals manipulate their online image or undermine others' reputations on social networks. It's crucial, however, to discern between the real and the fictitious, the digital and the analog, to prevent a distortion of reality in the face of digital virtuality.

As we tread deeper into this frontier of artificial intimacy and synthetic closeness, we must keep sight of the inherent human values that set us apart from machines. Ethical considerations need to guide our interactions with AI, even as we form increasingly complex relationships with our digital counterparts. Recognising the hybrid identities emerging from this new reality is fundamental, as is safeguarding our humanity in the age of artificial intimacy.