Artificial Intelligence and Intimate Relationships: Emotional Capitalism, Feminist Critique, and Christian Mysticism

This paper explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping intimate relationships through the lenses of emotional capitalism, feminist theory, and Christian mysticism. As humans increasingly form bonds with AI companions, traditional ethical frameworks fail to address the complex questions of agency, freedom, and moral responsibility that arise. Instead of simply rejecting or embracing AI intimacy, a nuanced understanding is needed—one that explores how different forms of intimacy coexist and their implications for human flourishing.

Drawing on Eva Illouz's concept of emotional capitalism, I argue that AI-mediated intimacy extends the commodification of relationships, where love becomes programmable and agency is reshaped by market logic. AI companions, designed to adapt to users' needs, shift emotional labor from mutual unpredictability to algorithmic control. This mirrors existing human relationship dynamics, where intimacy is increasingly shaped by customization and optimization, deepening social inequalities and reinforcing a consumerist approach to relationships.

To understand what is at stake in these transformations, I turn to Dorothee Sölle’s reinterpretation of Christian mystical ecstasy (ec-stasis) as a theological counterpoint to the commodification of intimacy. While AI relationships offer controlled, predictable intimacy, ecstasy—rooted in contingency and imperfection—resists commodification. This framework challenges algorithmic relationships by reframing love as a liberatory force that requires vulnerability, openness to the unknown, and relational justice.

Gender, Power, and AI Intimacy

First, I challenge the argument that AI relationships are inherently inappropriate because they involve non-human entities. As transhumanist technologies blur the boundaries between human and non-human existence, ontological and identity-based ethical critiques must be reexamined. Such perspectives risk reinforcing heteronormative and patriarchal standards, where the legitimacy of love is dictated by dominant societal norms, marginalizing those who deviate from traditional gender roles, heterosexual norms, and nuclear family structures. This exclusionary logic has historically been used to stigmatize sexual minorities, people with disabilities, and those in non-traditional relationships. Rosi Braidotti suggests that human-technological relationships can challenge anthropocentrism, offering new possibilities for subjectivity beyond the rigid human/non-human hierarchy. I argue that the real issue is not AI itself but how neoliberal market logics distort its potential—reducing AI companionship to a profit-driven commodity shaped by consumerism and individualism.

Second, I address the question of gender and power in the context of AI intimacy. Feminist scholars and activists have long warned that sexbots and AI girlfriends, primarily designed for male users, reinforce heteropatriarchal structures of dominance and control. When AI partners are programmed to be perpetually submissive and emotionally available, they risk normalizing gendered expectations of passivity in relationships. However, AI intimacy is not a monolithic phenomenon and requires a more nuanced ethical analysis. Two key considerations complicate conventional critiques:

1. Varied Motivations for AI Companionship: Many users turn to AI partners for emotional support, particularly in response to trauma, social anxiety, or marginalization. For those struggling to form human connections, AI companions offer a sense of safety, acceptance, and emotional stability.
2. Evolving Human-AI Relationships: AI relationships can serve as a space for identity exploration, allowing users to challenge traditional gender and sexual norms in ways that may not be possible offline. Beyond physical or sexual aspects, many AI partners are designed to simulate intellectual and emotional connections, creating increasingly complex and multifaceted forms of intimacy.

This complexity suggests that AI intimacy cannot be fully reduced to an either/or dichotomy or a framework of dominance and submission. Instead, we must critically assess when and how AI relationships perpetuate oppressive structures while also recognizing their potential to create new forms of relational experience. The challenge, then, is to navigate the ethical gray areas of AI intimacy, ensuring that these technologies do not further entrench exploitation, objectification, or social inequality.

Emotional Capitalism and the Commodification of Intimacy

To understand AI intimacy, the discourse must be situated within emotional capitalism—Illouz's concept of how capitalist structures commodify emotional life through evaluation, optimization, and trade. Dating apps and algorithmic matchmaking have already transformed intimacy into a quantifiable commodity, and AI companions intensify this trend by offering perfectly curated, programmable relationships. By allowing users to control every aspect of their partner's appearance, personality, and responses, AI intimacy promises freedom from relational uncertainty. Yet this control raises a paradox: can thoroughly programmed interactions still constitute love?

Furthermore, AI intimacy exacerbates existing social hierarchies in both gender and class. In terms of gender, while AI intimacy holds the potential to challenge heteronormativity, it is ultimately market logic that reinforces patriarchal norms by privileging male users and perpetuating gendered stereotypes. Class is another concern: just as dating apps disproportionately benefit those with financial, social, and aesthetic capital, AI companionship reinforces relational inequality, favoring those with access to wealth and technology while further isolating marginalized individuals. If love becomes a service, accessible only to those privileged in gender hierarchies and those who can afford the most sophisticated AI partners, what does this mean for relational justice?

Christian Mysticism as a Counterpoint

To counter the commodification of intimacy, this paper turns to Christian mystical ecstasy as an alternative framework for understanding love, relationality, and freedom. Traditionally, ecstasy (ec-stasis) is the experience of stepping outside oneself, an act of radical openness to the unknown. Unlike AI intimacy, which seeks to eliminate uncertainty and vulnerability, ecstasy embraces unpredictability as a necessary condition for love.

Dorothee Sölle reinterprets ecstasy as a form of resistance—a movement that disrupts the logic of emotional capitalism by calling individuals into deeper relational engagement. Instead of treating love as a product to be consumed, ecstasy reframes it as a transformative encounter, requiring mutual vulnerability, unpredictability, and self-transcendence. While AI intimacy potentially reinforces control and consumer-driven power asymmetries, mystical ecstasy calls for a radical vision of love grounded in mutual vulnerability and relational justice.

Ultimately, this paper argues that rethinking love through mysticism, spirituality, and social ethics is urgently needed as AI reshapes human relationships. What does freedom mean when love becomes an algorithm? How does AI challenge or reinforces traditional notions of agency, relationality, and the sacred?