Companion and the Borders of Power Dynamics in AI-Human Relationships

Abstract

The 2025 film Companion presents viewers with a sci-fi vision in which the intricacies of romanticized relationships between humans and artificially intelligent companion robots are embedded in wider power struggles informed by gender, space, race, and class. The human main characters deny the protagonist Iris – a feminized companion – any ethical consideration or agency, which leads to a chain of events in which conceptual borders relating to identity, agency, heteronormativity, corporeality, and capitalist ownership are renegotiated. This article dissects the contours of these borders and their functioning within the film’s engagement with the epistemic and ontological thresholds that need to be navigated when humans and AI enter into symbiotic relationships. Special focus is given to relationality as well as cognitive and emotional feedback loops in which identities are forged in mutually reinforcing dynamics. Meaning-making processes are shown to be central for all characters involved, underlining how a “narrative conception of the self” overrides certain ontological conception of what or who appears real. The toxic masculinity displayed by Iris’ boyfriend offers entry points for an examination of gendered power structures in AI-human relationships. Naturalized borders surrounding sexual orientation and ethno-linguistic belonging are shown to be technological productions which AI can easily adjust to. The role of the AI developers in the story illustrates a socio-economic framework in which human and AI characters are agents within a larger power concentration and data collection regime cloaked in a language of neoliberal choice. The film thereby offers entry points in which contemporary power struggles pertaining to sexuality, gender, techno-capitalism, as well as emotional and relational ethics are negotiated in ways that de-center anthropocentric and hegemonic perspectives.