For most of us, the idea that a loved one might communicate with us using AI is unsettling. After all, authenticity is a touchstone of human interactions. In the research that I conduct on community enga g ement , I frequently discuss authenticity and emotional intelligence—one’s capacity to read and navigate a person’s emotions. Both traits are indispensable in forging durable, trusting connections and collaborations with people, and they’re two of the few remaining things separating human cognition from that of AI.

There’s an actual name for the “ick” we feel when we suspect someone’s been using AI with us in personal discussions: Capgras syndrome . Named after French psychiatrist Joseph Capgras, the rare condition, first described in the 1920s, speaks to the deeply internal

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