Significant Other AI: Identity, Memory, and Emotional Regulation as Long-Term Relational Intelligence
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866912752960798720 |
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| author | Park, Sung |
| author_facet | Park, Sung |
| contents | Significant Others (SOs) stabilize identity, regulate emotion, and support narrative meaning-making, yet many people today lack access to such relational anchors. Recent advances in large language models and memory-augmented AI raise the question of whether artificial systems could support some of these functions. Existing empathic AIs, however, remain reactive and short-term, lacking autobiographical memory, identity modeling, predictive emotional regulation, and narrative coherence. This manuscript introduces Significant Other Artificial Intelligence (SO-AI) as a new domain of relational AI. It synthesizes psychological and sociological theory to define SO functions and derives requirements for SO-AI, including identity awareness, long-term memory, proactive support, narrative co-construction, and ethical boundary enforcement. A conceptual architecture is proposed, comprising an anthropomorphic interface, a relational cognition layer, and a governance layer. A research agenda outlines methods for evaluating identity stability, longitudinal interaction patterns, narrative development, and sociocultural impact. SO-AI reframes AI-human relationships as long-term, identity-bearing partnerships and provides a foundational blueprint for investigating whether AI can responsibly augment the relational stability many individuals lack today. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_00418 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Significant Other AI: Identity, Memory, and Emotional Regulation as Long-Term Relational Intelligence Park, Sung Human-Computer Interaction Artificial Intelligence Significant Others (SOs) stabilize identity, regulate emotion, and support narrative meaning-making, yet many people today lack access to such relational anchors. Recent advances in large language models and memory-augmented AI raise the question of whether artificial systems could support some of these functions. Existing empathic AIs, however, remain reactive and short-term, lacking autobiographical memory, identity modeling, predictive emotional regulation, and narrative coherence. This manuscript introduces Significant Other Artificial Intelligence (SO-AI) as a new domain of relational AI. It synthesizes psychological and sociological theory to define SO functions and derives requirements for SO-AI, including identity awareness, long-term memory, proactive support, narrative co-construction, and ethical boundary enforcement. A conceptual architecture is proposed, comprising an anthropomorphic interface, a relational cognition layer, and a governance layer. A research agenda outlines methods for evaluating identity stability, longitudinal interaction patterns, narrative development, and sociocultural impact. SO-AI reframes AI-human relationships as long-term, identity-bearing partnerships and provides a foundational blueprint for investigating whether AI can responsibly augment the relational stability many individuals lack today. |
| title | Significant Other AI: Identity, Memory, and Emotional Regulation as Long-Term Relational Intelligence |
| topic | Human-Computer Interaction Artificial Intelligence |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.00418 |