‘I don’t want a lot for Christmas / There is just one thing I need
I don’t care about the presents / Underneath the Christmas tree
I just want you for my own / More than you could ever know
Make my wish come true / All I want for Christmas is you, yeah’
From nearly the first light of November, it has become increasingly difficult for even the most discerning critic to evade the enduring lyrics of Mariah Carey’s long-lasting Christmas classic, ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’. Blasting from supermarket sound systems, blaring from car radios, and booming from party speakers, the memorable melody and lively lyrics of the 1994 hit have composed a cultural soundtrack to our long Christmas season. Whatever your view of its musical merits or demerits, the core message of the song is a worthy one: rather than splash money on our loved ones, spend quality time with them instead.
While it might be unlikely that Mariah Carey meant spiritual communion with Christ when she sang of love and relationships, the importance of valuing relationships above material consumption is something that surely appeals to Catholic listeners and seems to resonate with a wider audience. Indeed, in a time of deepening loneliness, growing isolation, and social unrest, the yearning cry for connection resounds. Yet there can often appear a yawning chasm between our stated preferences for belonging and community and our revealed preferences for separation and solitude, especially in our intensive use of addictive and isolating technologies.
It does seem striking that, as we approach Christmas and enjoy songs about love and relationships, we are simultaneously seeing a rapid rise in the relatively new phenomenon of so-called ‘AI companionship’. Though perhaps it is not really that curious; our in-built human desire for relationship requires an outlet, and AI provides quick, cheap, and easy access to the relatively reliable simulation of social connection. Where does the proliferation of these parasocial relations with AI ‘friends’, ‘therapists’, and ‘romantic partners’ leave us, and how might we think about it?
Although the precise picture is difficult to draw, the phenomenon of ‘AI companionship’ seems to be growing from strength to strength. Recent research from the Harvard Business Review found that the top use case, the way in which a user interacts with a product or service to achieve a specific goal, for generative AI globally in 2025 was ‘therapy/companionship’. In Britain, a recent study from Ipsos in September found that nearly one in five Britons, 18 per cent, have turned to AI for personal advice, while 11 per cent have engaged with AI as a companion and 9 per cent have substituted AI for a therapist or counsellor. Moreover, 19 per cent of respondents said that AI is a ‘viable’ substitute, and 17 per cent said that AI is a ‘good’ substitute for human interaction. Although these remain minority figures for the time being, they supply some illustration of a significant demand for AI companionship.
Such demand seems likely only to increase, both for boutique AI models, like Replika and Character.AI, and for parasocial relations with general-purpose AI programmes, such as ChatGPT and Grok. On the supply side, there are strong incentives for increasing the availability and accessibility of AI companions. The size of the global AI companion market was measured at $366.7 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $501 billion in 2026, and a further $972.1 billion by 2035. Rapid technological development allows for even more immersive, engaging, and profitable models. On the demand side, the human desire for companionship in an increasingly isolated and fractured social landscape will remain a powerful driver. The latest statistics on loneliness in Britain from this October show that 24 per cent of Britons feel lonely always, often, or some of the time. It seems a safe bet for AI companies to expect high and growing demand for their companionable products.
Even in the case of some temporary deflation of an AI ‘bubble’ or the tighter regulation of AI products, the potential for parasocial relations with AI seems here to stay. Not all relatable AI products and services might raise the same concerns. Receiving care from AI robotic models in healthcare might be more palatable than having to figure out the right social cues for responding to the news of your friend’s ‘AI boyfriend’. Yet it does seem we need to think more deeply, as a Church and as a community, about our relationship with AI, rather than simply sleepwalking into a parallel world of widespread AI companionship.
Readers might reasonably wonder what AI companionship has to do with the Church. Surely this is just another sign and symbol of modern moral malaise, as the worship of a life-giving God is replaced by the idolatry of lifeless objects. Perhaps it is the final nudge to build the Benedict Option instead.
And yet, we know that the Church, through the wisdom of her God-given teaching, is an ‘expert in humanity’ (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 2006). Such expertise is a gift to share. Reasons for seeking AI companionship, from the hopeful desire to be known and loved to the fearful temptation to avoid the risk, reward, and responsibility of real human relationships, are recognisable and understandable through a Christian understanding of the human person, warts and all.
An excellent example of a compelling Catholic contribution to the challenge of AI intimacy is a recent article by Fr Michael Baggot, Professor Aggregato of Bioethics at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome, ‘The Quest for Connection in AI Companions’, published in the Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Fr Baggot demonstrates that, although AI companions promise emotional support and can provide some level of psychosocial assistance in certain settings, the pitfalls of unhealthy dependency, warped thinking, and worsened mental health are profound.
In response, Fr Baggot suggests that the Church has a critical role to play in meeting the social and emotional needs of those who might turn to AI companions, especially through her sacramental life, parish communities, and an empowering focus on the personal development of relational virtues. Rather than abandoning people to lacklustre and deeply limited imitations of intimacy via AI, the Church can and should recognise and redirect their desire for connection and companionship to a healthier and more fulfilling end.
As our Advent season nears its end, the uptempo notes of Mariah Carey fade and our carols reach a chorus of hope and expectation. The birth of Christ gives birth to our own hopes for salvation and the possibility of individually and collectively sharing in the divine life of Christ, both now and in heaven. In that irrepressible light, the wishes we might place in AI for some sort of scant simulacrum of human relationship seem very faint indeed.
