Julie Carpenter, Ph.D.

People · Technology · Culture

My research examines what happens when people form relationships with AI, how those relationships are experienced, what they reveal about identity and agency, and how they quietly shape the design of the systems people use every day.

My recent book, The Naked Android: Synthetic Socialness and the Human Gaze, examines how the stories people tell about robots and AI don't merely reflect how these systems are built; they actively shape them. Available from Routledge, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

Publication — AI & Society
How emotional attachment to conversational AI develops through interaction over time — and what that means for trust, dependency, and governance.
Blog — Drift
A voice doesn't have to belong to a person to feel like someone's there, and that feeling is designed.
Press — KALA Radio
A coversation about how we are learning to live in a world with humanoid robots in our everyday spaces.
Press — New York Times
Quoted in Kashmir Hill’s investigation into how AI reshapes the boundaries between technology and human companionship.