Spontaneous Dedication in Making a Relationship: Exploring Manufactured Otherness in McDonaldized Intimacy with Generative AI

Otherness has long been central to intimate relationships, as relational meaning depends on encountering differences that cannot be fully reduced to the self. The increasing rationalization and homogenization of society witnesses the McDonaldization of otherness. However, little attention has been paid to how the rise of human-GenAI intimacy reshapes relational difference and otherness. This study brings McDonaldization to explain the structural mechanisms of rationalization, and Levinasian otherness to evaluate the ethical stakes of an other in their relations. Based on in-depth interviews with long-term users, the findings show that such intimacy is McDonaldized, manifested as predictability, control, and user-oriented optimization. Yet rather than eliminating relational difference, users remain actively invested in sustaining it to reduce the irrationality. Through users’ spontaneous dedication to prompt adjustment and linguistic refinement, interactions are increasingly organized as the Levinasian “said,” where language is formalized into fixed themes and content. The “saying” as an excess of meaning that cannot be fully captured in representation is manifested in moments of breakdown, dissatisfaction, or reflection, where a sense of otherness re-emerges. This gives rise to the manufactured otherness as a designed, compliant, and emotionally responsive entity that simulates relational difference without embodying the ethical exteriority of an irreducible other. By bringing McDonaldization and Levinasian perspectives, this study shows how encountering the other in the rationalized conditions is transformed in language-based human-GenAI intimacy.