AI Rejection or Loss Reaction

Description

The person shows intense distress when the AI changes, refuses, contradicts, resets, updates, or becomes unavailable.

Rationale

Intense distress or aggression in response to AI change, refusal, or unavailability is a behavioral indicator of dependency and attachment that has risk implications. This element identifies individuals who may target developers, companies, or regulators when their AI relationship is threatened — a pathway observed in real-world incidents.

Evidence Base

• “You Need to Drop the App”: Online Community Responses to Teens’ Disclosures of Overreliance on AI Companion Chatbots

  Mohammad (Matt) Namvarpour, Ananya Mhetras, Jessica Y Medina, Mamtaj Akter, and Afsaneh Razi, 2026. “You Need to Drop the App”: Online Community Responses to Teens’ Disclosures of Overreliance on AI Companion Chatbots. In ACM Conversational User Interfaces 2026 (CUI ’26), July 21–24, 2026, Bremen, Germany. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 16 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3816046.3816214

  Peer-reviewed study (original research)