Social companionship with artificial intelligence: Recent trends and future avenues

The social companionship (SC) feature in conversational agents (CAs) enables the emotional bond and consumer relationships. The heightened interest in SC with CAs led to exponential growth in publications scattered across disciplines with fragmented findings, thus limiting holistic understanding of the domain and warrants a macroscopic view of the domain to guide future research directions. The present study fills the research void by offering a comprehensive literature review entailing science performance and intellectual structure mapping. The comprehensive review revealed the research domain's major theories, constructs, and thematic structure. Thematic and content analysis of intellectual structure resulted in a conceptual framework encompassing antecedents, mediators, moderators, and consequences of SC with CAs. The study discusses future research directions guiding practitioners and academicians in designing efficient and ethical AI companions.