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This paper investigates user experiences with AI companions through the lens of Uses and Gratifications (U&G) theory, conducting interviews with 20 users of AI companionship platforms and performing qualitative content analysis. The study identifies established U&G categories uniquely inflected by AI affordances like personalization and persistent availability, while also uncovering novel gratifications such as creative collaboration, relational simulation, and sexual/romantic satisfaction. Longitudinal analysis revealed a shift from instrumental motivations to emotional engagement, highlighting the evolving nature of user needs and the potential for self-regulated moderation.
AI companions aren't just replacements for human connection; users are actively co-creating novel relational experiences like simulated therapy and collaborative creativity, revealing a new frontier in human-AI interaction.
Conversational AI companions have grown prominent in public discourse, yet scholarly understanding of user experiences remains limited, with existing research organized around evaluative poles of harm and benefit rather than examining what users seek, how affordances mediate need fulfillment, or how use evolves over time. Drawing on interviews with 20 users of AI companionship platforms and qualitative content analysis informed by Uses and Gratifications (U&G) theory, this study offers three contributions. First, participants reported gratifications mapping onto established U&G categories but qualitatively inflected by conversational AI's distinctive affordances, such as persistent availability, personalization, and absence of social judgment. Second, several gratifications, creative collaboration as relational co-production, relational simulation as interpersonal training, and sexual/romantic satisfaction as reclamation, do not map onto existing typologies, instead emerging through interactive processes in which users actively simulate experiences with AI. Third, gratifications shifted over time, moving from instrumental entry points toward emotional engagement and, in some cases, self-regulated moderation after therapeutic functions were fulfilled. These findings extend U&G by identifying gratification processes unique to interactive AI and suggest governance efforts would benefit from an empirically grounded understanding of how and why users engage with AI companions.