Keelan Christie

Speculative Companionship: A Critical Design Inquiry into AI-Powered Pets in a Corporate Controlled Future

This thesis imagines a speculative future shaped by rising living costs, strict housing laws, and rapid AI development, where AI-powered pets have replaced real animals in most urban areas. Marketed as affordable and convenient, they raise questions about trust, control, and emotional connection.

The project uses speculative and critical design to examine the commodification of care and corporate influence in personal relationships. Rather than predicting the future, it constructs a believable version of it, encouraging reflection on how quickly trust can be shaped and used as a design tool.

Co-design sessions informed the development of artefacts including a robotic dog prototype, fur and eye swatch boards, fictional newspapers, and a digital pet configurator. These elements provide context to the imagined world, making it feel tangible and familiar.

The exhibition is arranged chronologically, using fictional newspapers to tell the story. Beginning in 2041, these establish a world of megacities with high-density housing, where domestic pet bans are introduced for safety due to smaller living conditions. The early adoption of AI pets begins in therapeutic and service roles before expanding into the consumer market, fuelled by restrictions on domestic pets and advances in emotional robotics.

As the story progresses, the artefacts reveal how personalisation, branding, and subscription-based upgrades turn companionship into a product. By 2066, the final newspaper exposes leading corporations for using AI pets to harvest data and influence behaviour, revealing the full extent of corporate control. The exhibition leads visitors from intrigue to discomfort and distrust, inviting them to consider how emotional connection changes when it is designed, packaged, and sold. Rather than offering a clear resolution, it aims to leave viewers questioning current trends by displaying a potential future that could become a genuine reality.