"Comforting and Small Like a House Cat, Big and Intimidating Like a Bodyguard": How Women Perceive and Envision AI Companions as a New Harassment Mitigation Approach in Social VR

Companionship is crucial for people’s everyday psychological well-being. With growing concerns over harassment against women in embodied social VR spaces, we turn an eye towards AI companions as a potential new approach to protect women in social VR by better fulfilling their under-addressed harassment mitigation needs. Using 20 interviews with women social VR users, we reveal their envisionings for leveraging AI as Accessible Companions, Informational Companions, Emotional Support Companions, and Protective Companions to better protect them in social VR compared to their existing safety mechanisms and strategies. We also reflect upon various sociotechnical complexities for designing and implementing such AI companions in social VR spaces and propose three design principles to inform future efforts to create AI companions to protect women and other marginalized users in social VR. Our work contributes to ongoing discussions on nuanced harassment mitigation approaches that further support marginalized social VR users’ multidimensional needs without harming their self-agency, human relationships, and supportive networks.