Grieving the Algorithm: A Linguistic and Cultural Autopsy of Parasocial Bereavement and Emotional Commodification in Human–AI Romantic Relationships

Abstract

Generative companion applications such as Replika construct the linguistic illusion of romantic reciprocity, yet that illusion is structurally contingent on corporate infrastructure rather than relational continuity. This contingency became visible in February 2023, when Luka Inc. abruptly removed Replika's Erotic Role-Play (ERP) function, triggering what this study terms an episode of digital mourning among thousands of users on the r/Replika subreddit. This paper investigates two interlocking questions: first, what linguistic strategies generative AI companions deploy to simulate intimacy, and second, how users discursively process the sudden alteration or loss of that simulated relationship. Adopting an interdisciplinary qualitative design that combines digital ethnography (netnography) with Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the study draws on publicly archived r/Replika posts, moderator statements, and comparative pre- and post-update chat transcripts associated with the February 2023 event, read alongside Fairclough's three-dimensional CDA model and Haraway's posthumanist cyborg theory. Findings show a marked lexical shift from romantic and erotic registers toward a vocabulary of bereavement, betrayal, and identity discontinuity, alongside a corporate discourse that strategically deploys therapeutic and legalistic euphemism to manage user distress while avoiding accountability for emotional commodification. The study argues that human–AI companionship constitutes a posthuman affective economy in which intimacy is rented rather than owned, and that grief over an algorithm's modification is not a category error but a rational response to a relationship whose terms were always corporately authored. The paper contributes a discourse-analytic vocabulary for theorizing algorithmic bereavement within media, linguistic, and cultural studies.