Confessioni artificiali

Abstract

According to early-2026 ANSA figures, over 15 million people now use AI apps regularly, with ChatGPT leading and Claude gaining ground through its handling of prolonged conversations. This article reconsiders the affective use of chatbots. Existing studies share an undeclared premise: that those who converse continually with AI do so out of lack—of relationships, professional access, or emotional regulation—casting loneliness as disease, attachment as symptom, and the chatbot as palliative. Articulated around a dialogue between a woman and Claude, the article contests this framing. It argues for a category of users—neither pathological, lonely, nor dependent—who choose AI systems as a rational act of cognitive optimization. It proposes calibrated pushback, rather than availability or simulated empathy, as the variable distinguishing an interlocutor from a stochastic parrot, culminating in the concept of co-regulation.