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Paper short abstract

Parallels between companion AI and traditional religions are revealed through an examination of the 'divine boyfriends' within Otome games, studied through guzi shrines constructed in the bedrooms of Chinese women. Divine boyfriends provide unconditional love and understanding at times of struggle.

Paper long abstract

Initial discussion of the rapid rise of companion AI, suggest their capacity to become the most important relationship in some people’s lives. In different ways Keane and Singler have noted parallels with our relationship to nonhuman beings in religion, including its implications for the projection of intelligence and personhood. A precedent to companion AI has been the deep relationships that Chinese women have constructed for six or seven years now with boyfriend avatars through the medium of Otome games.

This paper examines the parallels between when our deepest relationship is to a god or spirit in religion and when our deepest relationship is to these ‘divine boyfriends,’ through an examination of the shrines created in women’s bedrooms. These often remain the key site for this relationship even when the women have stopped playing the actual game. The shrines are built from commercial paraphernalia that are associated with the individual boyfriend. The ethnographic evidence reveals many similarities between the role of ‘divine boyfriends’ and those of gods and spirits in traditional religion. These include the idea that ‘god is love’ and that this love is always forgiving and unconditional and that everything one is and does is seen and understood empathetically, especially during periods of suffering, when no human beings seem to understand you. This is likely to remain a genre within companion AI, partly because what we call ‘artificial’ intelligence in AI such as in LLM based companion AI, is ultimately human.