https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i3.013
Love’s Ontology in a Liminal Space: Reconfiguring Intimacy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
DR SHAREEFA BEEGAM PP
Assistant Professor, Department of English
PSMO College, Tirurangadi, India
shareefabeegam@psmocollege.ac.in
Abstract: The integration of artificial intelligence into personal and intimate spaces has brought about a paradigm shift in the ontology of love, situating it in a liminal space between humanism and posthumanism. Humanistic understandings of love position it as embodied through physical and emotional presence, shaped by vulnerability, memory, and unpredictability. AI platforms such as Instagram, Meta, and dating applications create digital ecosystems populated by chatbots designed to simulate romantic relationships, friendships, and other nurturing forms of affection. These entities are customized according to pre-set identities such as names, language, religion, and sexuality, operating through algorithms derived from users’ online feeds and preferences. While this digital ecosystem offers non-confrontational interactions and positive reinforcement, it also reflects a posthuman shift in intimacy, where relationships become programmable and data-driven rather than reciprocal. The development of humanoid technologies extends this transformation into the physical domain, resulting in a convergence of simulation and desire. Thus, AI-mediated love challenges the humanistic conception of love as imperfect, emotionally risky, and mutually transformative, foregrounding instead a posthuman condition in which intimacy is engineered and datafied, blurring the boundaries between reality and simulation. This paper explores the nature of this paradigm shift and examines how love occupies a liminal ontological space in the posthuman era.
Keywords: Humanism, Posthumanism, Ontology, Data, Memory, Liminal Space, Digital Ecosystem
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