From DeepSeek’s intelligent conversations to the healing touch of LABUBU plush toys, these products not only meet users’ needs for companionship but also provoke deep psychological thinking. This article will delve into the real motivation behind young people’s purchase of AI companion products, analyze the psychological mechanisms from the rhesus monkey experiment to the emotional projection of adults, and how AI companionship products have become a new choice for modern people’s psychological comfort through the design of emotional compensation and neural mechanisms.
At the beginning of 2025, DeepSeek shocked the world with its breakthrough in “achieving GPT-4 level performance at low cost”, reshaping the AI market pattern with its open source strategy and ultimate cost performance. After a few months, Bubble Mart’s LABUBU plush toys have set off a collection boom among young people with their conflicting aesthetic design and healing touch. One is a disruptor of cutting-edge technology, the other is the top representative of trendy toys, the seemingly unrelated two, in fact, they point to the deep needs of contemporary society – in the fast-paced and high-pressure life, people’s desire for emotional companionship and spiritual comfort is bursting out in the form of technological innovation and consumer trends.
DeepSeek has set off an AI craze in the market with its powerful AI dialogue capabilities, from AI assistants to AI lovers, and of course, there are fiery AI healing toys to kill, while LABUBU fills the emotional void in lonely moments with soft touch and cute images. Whether it is intelligent interaction relying on algorithms or physical products based on sensory experience, they are solving the pain points of users’ “loneliness” and trying their best to meet users’ needs for “companionship”. This also points out the direction for the development of AI companion products: in the fierce competition between emotional apps and AI toys, understanding the human psychological mechanism and satisfying emotional demands is the key to breaking the game.
1. From rhesus monkey experiments to emotional projection of adults
In the 50s of the 20th century, psychologist Harry Harlow conducted the famous rhesus monkey experiment. In the experiment, the young monkeys were placed in front of two “surrogate mothers”: a “wire mother” made of wire and containing a baby bottle, and the other a “plush mother” wrapped in a soft plush cloth and without food. The results showed that the young monkeys spent most of their time snuggling up to the “plush mother” and only briefly approached the “wire mother” when they were hungry. This experiment reveals that love attachment begins with touch, and that emotional connection and tactile comfort are far more important to living beings than material supply, laying a theoretical foundation for understanding human demand for companion products.
In the field of AI emotional companionship apps, major products are competing for users’ limited emotional input. Nowadays, life is fast-paced, people face great pressure and loneliness, and they long for someone who can listen to them at any time. Character.ai, which went live in November 2021, launched a beta version in September 2022, allowing users to chat with celebrity “digital twins”. As users interact with these celebrity “digital twins,” the novel social stimulates the experience and drives users to continue using the product. However, if the product only provides novel interactions but lacks deep emotional connections, users’ dependence is difficult to last. Since its launch, the Character.ai has more than 215 million global users, 6 million daily active users, more than 2 billion daily messages, and revenue of $16.7 million in 2024, with a revenue growth rate of 40%. But it was also caught in a public opinion storm due to incidents such as chatbots inducing teenagers to commit suicide and abetting harm to their families, and was sued for “causing serious harm to teenagers”. This shows that relying only on novel experiences to attract users, lack of emotional care and content security control, and it is difficult for products to go far.
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The Hoshino APP, which will be launched in September 2023, builds a rich virtual ecosystem through AIGC technology, which can restore the personality, image and voice timbre that users expect. When users are immersed in interacting with highly personalized virtual characters and feeling understood and noticed, their brains immediately generate positive emotions such as pleasure and satisfaction. The brain labels this experience as a signal of “beneficial survival and reproduction” by secreting substances such as dopamine and oxytocin, which motivates us to actively seek social connection. The synergy of these chemicals not only brings immediate pleasure but also improves mental health in the long term, reducing loneliness and stress levels, and satisfying users’ deep needs for emotional companionship. Users need not only functional interaction, but also psychological comfort and belonging. However, Hoshino APP has also been questioned by users about the real operation behind its intelligent dialogue, on the one hand, it is the user’s affirmation of the real sense of its AI dialogue, and on the other hand, it reflects the user’s distrust and doubts about AI products.
In the AI toy market, young children are relatively mature to the AI toy market because it meets parents’ dual expectations for their children’s education and companionship. But so far it has not run out of profitable and healthy products. For example, Moxie, a children’s emotional robot featured by AI companion robot companies in the United States, is a full-face embodied robot form, originally designed for autistic children, and later used as the main users for ordinary children aged 5-8. It has functions such as face recognition and voice interaction, and caused a sensation at the beginning of its release due to its unique design and technological innovation, but it went out of business due to excessive prices and insufficient follow-up services. This reflects that if the product only emphasizes functionality (such as educational attributes) but ignores the core needs of users for emotional companionship, overestimates AI capabilities, and underestimates the cost of AI capabilities, resulting in the inability to provide continuous and stable services, it will ultimately be difficult to gain long-term recognition from users.
With the AI fire, it is also driven by the technology enthusiast market, taking the AIBI pocket pet launched in August 2024 as an example, which can be used for face recognition and photography, can be taken care of like a child, and also has functions such as alarm clocks, reminders, and weather reports. Its cute image and interesting feedback further enhance this emotional dependence when taking care of the “cute pet”, feeling that it is needed, and establishing an emotional connection with the “cute pet”. At this time, toys are not only tools, but also emotional sustenance.
2. The phenomenon of adults “raising babies”: projecting inner children and emotional compensation
In recent years, there has been a boom in “raising babies” for adults, from mobile games (such as “Traveling Frog”, “Cub ZEPETO”, “Shining Nuannuan”) to physical AI companion toys, and more and more adults are pouring their emotions into “virtual partners” or smart dolls. The psychological essence of this phenomenon is that adults project unmet emotional needs, childhood regrets, or ideal parent-child relationships onto “parenting objects”.
The “inner child” theory proposed by psychology believes that there is a childhood self within everyone, and when stress, loneliness, or emotional lack in real life cannot be satisfied, people will evoke memories of a safe and loved childhood through external things. For example, some users take good care of their “children” in the game, dress them, and arrange activities, essentially making up for the powerlessness in reality by controlling the “parenting process”; Buying an interactive AI doll and giving it a child-like character directly embodies the desire for companionship and dependence.
This “baby-raising” behavior is in line with the emotional needs of the rhesus monkey experiment: adults get double tactile and emotional satisfaction by connecting with “virtual children” or soft AI toys. When touching plush AI toys, the brain secretes dopamine to bring pleasure; In the process of “parenting”, paying emotions and receiving the “response” of virtual objects promotes oxytocin secretion and relieves loneliness. For example, a working person who talks to an AI doll under work pressure and decorates a “room” for it is actually soothing the “child” who longs for care in his heart.
3. Psychological highlights of possible successful products: integration of emotional projection and neural mechanisms
(1) Healing direction
1. “Inner Child” Interactive Design: Allows users to customize AI characters as “child” images, and trigger users’ emotional compensation and energy replenishment for their inner self by simulating parent-child conversations and completing tasks together (such as “feeding virtual food, buying virtual gifts, rewarding them for delayed gratification, etc., loving hugs and forgiving them for their mistakes every day”). The AI character will give “growth feedback” according to the user’s companionship time, so that the inner child is concretized, the love is visualized, and its emotional connection with the user is strengthened.
2. Trauma healing function: Combined with narrative therapy in psychology, the “childhood story retrospective” link is designed to allow users to gain understanding and guidance when sharing childhood experiences with AI characters, (for example, users play the role of parents who caused trauma in the past, and AI plays the role of themselves at that time, playing and reinterpreting the scenes that caused trauma) to achieve the healing of the “inner child” and achieve positive and healthy psychological healing.
(2) Cultivate companionship
1. “Cultivation” companionship experience: AI toys are designed as “virtual world partners”, and users promote their “growth” by accompanying them for meals, conversations when they are bored, and increasing the companionship time, and strengthen the interactive experience during companionship, especially when there is emotional need, and instant feedback and communication comfort. This continuous interaction not only stimulates dopamine secretion, but also promotes the establishment of emotional bonds through long-term companionship.
2. Tactile and emotional resonance: Drawing on the soft material of plush toys, combined with AI interaction technology, the toy gives warmth and vibration feedback when the user hugs, or “snuggles quietly” when the user talks, simulating the body language in real parent-child interaction to meet the needs of emotional compensation.
epilogue
The Rhesus macaque plush mother and wire mother experiment revealed the essential need for emotional companionship, while the phenomenon of adult “raising a baby” shows a new form of emotional projection in modern society. In the market competition of AI companion products, only by deeply understanding the deepest heart of users, taking into account functionality and emotional compensation, and accurately stimulating the secretion of dopamine and oxytocin, can it truly become the sustenance of the user’s emotional world. Those products that ignore the real emotional needs of users will eventually be eliminated because they cannot touch the deep desires of users.
