Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as large language models and generative AI play a growing role in our social lives. However, our understanding of how AI shapes our social behaviour and relationships with people, technology, and the environment remains limited. This one-day workshop brings together multidisciplinary researchers and designers to explore the emerging roles of AI as a social catalyst in human social connections across diverse social contexts. Using contemporary examples and participatory design methods as a means of inquiry, we invite participants to collaboratively speculate, critique, and reflect on current and future scenarios centred on AI-mediated human--human social connection and AI companionship. Through hands-on design activities, participants will examine how design choices surface values, create boundaries, and produce ethical tensions when AI occupies relational social roles. This workshop will synthesise challenges and opportunities in this space towards building a research agenda on AI-mediated social connection and AI companionship.
Bransky et al. (Mon,) studied this question.