Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines by Turkle, Sherry

"A love letter to humanity written by a woman of brilliance and heart."―Priya Parker

From the bestselling author of Reclaiming Conversation, an urgent warning about how our ever-increasing reliance on AI chatbots is eroding our capacity for the very qualities that make us human.

If social media came for our attention, artificial intelligence is now coming for our capacity for attachment. Chatbots offer themselves as best friends, lovers, and psychotherapists--but when we allow AI to fill these roles, we accept as sufficient its mere performance of intimacy, empathy, and love. We begin to think that pretend empathy is empathy enough. The consequences are profound and troubling: Technology, by offering to do everything, is teaching us that we neither need nor have the capacity to take risks, have hard conversations, struggle through uncertainty and insecurity, or rely on our own faculties and judgment. In the process, it is producing a generation more alienated, depressed, and lonely than ever before.

In Artificial Intimacy, Sherry Turkle--the psychologist who pioneered our understanding of human-computer relationships--draws on vivid stories as well as decades of experience as a chronicler and analyst of digital culture to present an urgent warning about what these "perfect" companions are doing to our minds and relationships. Tracing our new habit of talking to machines through the human lifecycle--from children's earliest attachments to how we face death--Turkle offers both a cautionary tale and a roadmap for reclaiming our humanity in the age of AI.

"A necessary exploration of what happens when we seek the comforts of connection over the demands of relationships."―Esther Perel

"[Turkle is] the most qualified member of Team Humanity to call us back to our senses, and to each other."―Jonathan Haidt

Author: Sherry Turkle
Publisher: Little Brown and Company
Published: 09/29/2026
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.03lbs
Size: 9.56h x 6.25w x 0.97d
ISBN: 9780316573962

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 07/13/2026
Kirkus Reviews 08/15/2026

About the Author
Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and the founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. A leading expert in humans' relationship with digital objects, she continues to revolutionize our understanding of the role of technology on psychology and culture. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Alone Together, Reclaiming Conversation, and The Empathy Diaries. Turkle's most recent book is Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk To Machines (Little, Brown September 29, 2026) and is available for preorder now.

Turkle is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship, the Harvard Centennial Medal, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She received a joint doctorate in sociology and personality psychology from Harvard University and is a licensed clinical psychologist.

To view the Artificial Intimacy event schedule, please visit sherryturkle.com.