Do Personal AI Conversations Reduce Loneliness? Evidence from a Pre-Registered Experiment

Generative AI is increasingly promoted as a remedy for loneliness. We test this claim in a large-scale pre-registered experiment on a large sample of French adults. Participants assigned to treatment were asked to hold at least one personal conversation a day with a generative AI tool of their choice for 28 days; the control group continued as usual. The intervention raised socio-emotional AI use substantially. This led to an increase in subjective loneliness, a decline in life satisfaction, and a rise in depressive affect and in objective isolation, with more dinners taken alone. The effects are consistently adverse across outcome categories.