Genia Kostka and Hui Zhou present their ongoing research on chatbot adoption: Against the backdrop of the current AI revolution, AI-powered chatbots such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek are gaining increasing popularity and importance. Despite the plethora of chatbots on the market, the questions of which chatbot a user adopts and why some users develop stronger emotional attachments to chatbots than others remain understudied. Capitalizing on a large-scale survey with over 8,000 responses collected from Germany, the United States, China, and South Africa, this study scrutinises chatbot acceptance and emotional attachment in the context of ChatGPT and Deep Seek.
