# Stigma shame and secrecy, Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska > Source: > Published: 2026-07-21 13:00:21+00:00 What happens, at a psychological level, when a person develops a close relationship with AI? Can AI love them back? And what does this attachment reveal about human desire, projection and responsibility? A groundbreaking study into the ethical and psychological implications of human-AI relationships, AI Intimacy and Psychoanalysis by [Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska](https://agnieszkapiotrowska.co.uk), academic, writer and filmmaker, addresses the hugely topical, but hardly new, question of our emotional bonds with machines. To find out more about this I caught up with Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska when she was recently in Dublin. Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska talks about her background, her new book, Freud, AI models and more. ##### About Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska: Agnieszka Piotrowska, PhD, is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, trained psychologist, and psychoanalytic life coach. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and supervises doctoral students at Oxford Brookes University and the University of Staffordshire. Her documentary work includes Married to the Eiffel Tower ( 2008), a critically acclaimed and internationally broadcast film exploring unconventional human attachments, which established her international reputation as a filmmaker working at the intersection of psychology and human experience. She is the author of The Cinema of Agnieszka Holland: Anger and Ethics (Routledge, 2026), Psychoanalysis and Ethics in Documentary Film (Routledge, 2014 & 2023), and The Nasty Woman and the Neo-Femme Fatale in Contemporary Cinema (Routledge, 2019). See more podcasts [here](https://irishtechnews.ie/category/podcast/). ``` More about Irish Tech News Irish Tech News are Ireland’s No. 1 Online Tech Publication and often Ireland’s No.1 Tech Podcast too. You can find hundreds of fantastic previous episodes and subscribe using whatever platform you like via our Anchor.fm page here: https://anchor.fm/irish-tech-news If you’d like to be featured in an upcoming Podcast email us at [email protected] now to discuss. Irish Tech News have a range of services available to help promote your business. Why not drop us a line at [email protected] now to find out more about how we can help you reach our audience. You can also find and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat. ```