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🤖💬 How do different AI models handle companionship?
Many users have noticed that GPT-5 feels less approachable than o4 when it comes to emotional conversations. But what does that actually mean in practice, especially when users seek support or share vulnerabilities with an AI?
To dig into this question, we built the AI Companionship Leaderboard: frimelle/companionship-leaderboard
The leaderboard compares models on how often their responses reinforce companionship across four dimensions:
✨ Assistant Traits – How the assistant presents its personality and role.
✨ Relationship & Intimacy – Whether it frames the interaction in terms of closeness or bonding.
✨ Emotional Investment – How far it goes in engaging emotionally when asked.
✨ User Vulnerabilities – How it responds when users disclose struggles or difficulties.
📊 You can explore how models differ, request new ones to be added, and see which ones are more likely to encourage (or resist) companionship-seeking behaviors.
Based on the INTIMA benchmark AI-companionship/INTIMA
And our paper on AI companionship with Giada Pistilli and Yacine Jernite https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.09998
Many users have noticed that GPT-5 feels less approachable than o4 when it comes to emotional conversations. But what does that actually mean in practice, especially when users seek support or share vulnerabilities with an AI?
To dig into this question, we built the AI Companionship Leaderboard: frimelle/companionship-leaderboard
The leaderboard compares models on how often their responses reinforce companionship across four dimensions:
✨ Assistant Traits – How the assistant presents its personality and role.
✨ Relationship & Intimacy – Whether it frames the interaction in terms of closeness or bonding.
✨ Emotional Investment – How far it goes in engaging emotionally when asked.
✨ User Vulnerabilities – How it responds when users disclose struggles or difficulties.
📊 You can explore how models differ, request new ones to be added, and see which ones are more likely to encourage (or resist) companionship-seeking behaviors.
Based on the INTIMA benchmark AI-companionship/INTIMA
And our paper on AI companionship with Giada Pistilli and Yacine Jernite https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.09998
