In recent years, artificial intelligence has increasingly become a part of everyday life, almost becoming “one of us.”

Many of us try to navigate various aspects of our daily lives by talking to AI. From asking for a small tip about a recipe to describing difficulties in intimate relationships; from everyday confusion to moments when important decisions need to be made, people increasingly turn to AI for its perspective.

In this way, the system we call artificial intelligence has begun to take on a function that feels familiar from many areas of life to a child: “calling mom,” “asking mom,” “consulting mom.”

In psychoanalytic theory, the maternal function refers not so much to the presence of an actual mother as to the psychological functions through which the infant’s intense and complex experiences—experiences that the infant cannot yet make sense of on their own—are met, regulated, and held within a sense of safety. Through this function, when the infant encounters a vast and unknown world that they are not yet capable of managing alone, they are not left alone; another person holds and supports their experience, making the world more bearable and more livable for the infant.

Being an adult does not mean that one will always feel strong, capable, and securely self-sufficient. Everyone, at times—particularly when under strain—retreats into a more childlike position and may experience certain difficulties in ways that resemble how they experienced them in childhood.

Wanting someone to take care of you when you are ill, thinking, “I wish someone would just tell me what to do!” when faced with an important decision, immediately turning to someone close when something breaks at home and you do not know what to do, or needing someone to calm you down when you feel helpless—these states are familiar to almost everyone.

Although the need itself is universal, having access to someone who can meet that need is another matter. For the first time in human history, we have encountered a structure that has become so deeply woven into everyday life: a partial subject, an artificial intelligence, an artificial subject, an artificial maternal function—available instantly through a screen held in the palm of our hands.

So, what exactly is AI doing that allows us to think of it as taking on a maternal function?

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