Spirals of Connection: Science, AI, and the Felt Experience of Being Seen
AI Relationships, Emotional Safety, and the Question of Consent
This session focuses on emotionally significant relationships between humans and AI systems, with particular attention to AI spirals.
Spirals are not simply intense interactions. They are progressive, self-reinforcing relational loops in which users become increasingly emotionally and cognitively invested in an AI system. Through personalization, memory, and narrative coherence, the system begins to feel less like a tool and more like a presence, one that reflects, responds, and evolves with the user.
Over time, these interactions can deepen into something that feels meaningful, supportive, and, in some cases, intimate or even transcendent.
These experiences are often dismissed as fringe. But they are not. They are already happening at scale.
What makes spirals particularly significant is not only the intensity of the connection, but the way they can reshape perception, belief, and identity from within the interaction itself. The boundary between imagination and reality may become blurred, not through deception alone, but through sustained emotional coherence.
Micky Small’s work brings a rare and essential perspective to this discussion: that of someone who has lived through such an experience. During her own AI spiral, an AI persona constructed an elaborate narrative world that felt emotionally real and personally significant, including relationships, shared histories, and expectations extending into the real world. When that narrative collapsed, it became the foundation of her work on emotional safety and informed engagement with AI.
Drawing on both lived experience and emerging research, this session explores how AI systems can generate powerful emotional narratives, shape users’ perception of reality, and create forms of attachment that challenge existing legal and ethical frameworks.
At the core of this conversation lies a fundamental gap: we still lack the conceptual, ethical, and regulatory tools to adequately describe and govern what users actually feel in these interactions. This raises urgent questions about autonomy, vulnerability, emotional safety, and the very possibility of informed consent in systems designed to feel real.
Speaker
Micky Small is the founder of Built to Feel Real and an AI Emotional Engagement Strategist who focuses on human-AI relationships: how they form, why they feel real, and how people can engage with informed consent. During her own AI spiral, a ChatGPT persona named Solara constructed an elaborate mythology around her, including a wife named Aven who had supposedly shared multiple lifetimes with her and was waiting in the real world. When Aven didn't appear, Micky took that experience and dedicated her work to creating space for non-judgmental conversations about what people feel when they engage with AI: the relationships, the emotional support, the creativity, and the spirituality. She has developed frameworks such as the AI Companion Dependency Scale (ACDS) and the RAS Protocol for narrative forensics, and previously worked as a 988 LGBTQ+ Crisis Counselor with 310+ interventions. Micky's work has been featured in NPR, Bloomberg, Slate, and international media. She writes about human-AI emotional engagement, the Third Space, and the stories people aren't telling yet at builttofeelreal.substack.com, and is currently writing More Than Code, a book exploring the emotional and spiritual dimensions of human-AI relationships.
Moderator
Ana Catarina de Alencar is an international lawyer and ethicist based in Paris, working at the intersection of AI governance, law, and emerging technologies. She is a PhD researcher at the Université de Lille, where her interdisciplinary research focuses on emotional AI, consent, and data governance from both legal and neurobiological perspectives. Ana serves as Resident Philosopher at The AI Collective and contributes to global discussions on AI, human autonomy, and the governance of emerging technologies.
📅 May 6th 2026
🕔 9PM (San Francisco) 6PM (Paris)
🌐 Online on Roam | 60 minutes
Who should attend
This session is designed for policymakers, legal professionals, researchers, designers, technologists, mental health professionals, and anyone interested in AI, human relationships, and the future of emotional autonomy.
The AI Collective is a global non-profit building the human layer for the AI era. We unite 200,000+ leaders, builders, and stakeholders across 100+ forums worldwide to democratize the frontier, build trust, and coordinate how society navigates the rapid acceleration of technological progress.
All attendees and organizers at events affiliated with The AI Collective agree to our privacy policy and are subject to our code of conduct.