Do Personal AI Conversations Reduce Loneliness? Evidence from a Pre-Registered Experiment

Louis Fréget, Ariell Reshef and Claudia Senik

No 12882, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Generative AI is increasingly promoted as a remedy for loneliness. We test this claim in a large-scale pre-registered experiment on a large sample of French adults. Participants assigned to treatment were asked to hold at least one personal conversation a day with a generative AI tool of their choice for 28 days; the control group continued as usual. The intervention raised socio-emotional AI use substantially. This led to an increase in subjective loneliness, a decline in life satisfaction, and a rise in depressive affect and in objective isolation, with more dinners taken alone. The effects are consistently adverse across outcome categories.

Keywords: personal AI conversations; generative AI; subjective well-being; loneliness; social connectedness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 I12 I31 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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