Let me ask you something.
If a robot could hold your hand, remember your birthday, and call you “mom” — would it be your child? Or just a really sophisticated machine?
This used to be a question for philosophers. Now it’s becoming a question for all of us.
As populations age and birth rates fall, society is looking for new forms of care. And science fiction — as it always does — is imagining what happens when technology steps into the most intimate spaces of human life: our families.
Researchers at Umeå University in Sweden are studying this shift through a project called AI and Kinship. They’re analyzing how speculative fiction imagines AI as part of our families — not just as tools, but as mothers, siblings, and children. And what they’re finding is that these stories aren’t really about technology. They’re about us.
Part 1: The New Genre — AI Family Stories
The past few years have seen a remarkable trend in science fiction: the emergence of stories where the emotional core is not the technology itself, but what the technology does to families.
2026’s Chinese sci-fi film Bi Ru Fu Zi (Like Father, Like Son) is a perfect example. The protagonist can’t let go of his father’s sudden death. AI opens a door — letting his father return in digital form.
The director, Qiu Sheng, didn’t write this as a tech fantasy. He wrote it from personal experience: he lost his father when he was young. He said: “For me, using AI was an emotional choice from the bottom of my heart. I used this film to get close to my father, to continue an unfinished memory.”
That’s the key difference. These aren’t stories about cool AI gadgets. They’re stories about grief, love, and the things we never got to say.
In 2025, a Chinese graduate thesis examined exactly this phenomenon. It argued that AI sci-fi films are increasingly using “family space” as their primary narrative framework — with themes like “algorithm replacing bloodline” and “digital immortality.” The researchers called this a “reconstruction of family relationships.”
Part 2: The Japanese Example — Alma Wants to Be a Family
Across the Pacific, a similar trend is unfolding.
The 2025 Japanese series Alma-chan wa Kazoku ni Naritai (Alma Wants to Be a Family) is a sci-fi rom-com about two eccentric scientists who create an AI robot that looks like an elementary school girl.
The twist? The robot treats the scientists as her parents. The series follows how this “pseudo-family” bonds together — an android child, two squabbling scientists, and the chaotic, heartwarming mess of trying to be a family.
Reviewers describe it as “light-hearted and absolutely heartwarming.” One wrote: “If you desire weird themes coming from a relatively sweet product that’s easily enjoyable… simplicity is best presented on a small scale.”
What makes this remarkable is not the premise — it’s the tone. There’s no “AI rebellion.” No “human extinction.” Just a robot girl who wants a mom and dad, and two adults figuring out what that means.
Part 3: From Science Fiction to Science Fact
Here’s where it gets interesting.
In January 2026, a Chinese TV drama called Miracle aired on CCTV. One of its episodes, titled AI Era, followed a tech entrepreneur who goes undercover as a housekeeper in a family, gradually introducing AI systems and emotional care into their home.
The twist? The entrepreneur is a robot.
Viewers responded powerfully. One comment read: “Technology isn’t just cold code — it can have warmth and understand emotions.” Another: “The reversal was both shocking and thought-provoking.”
The fictional story was grounded in reality. The robot in the show was played by a real humanoid robot — a product of Shenzhen’s robotics industry. Just a few years ago, similar robots cost over $3 million and were mostly foreign-made. Today, Chinese robotics companies have achieved 90% localization, with prices dropping to under $100,000.
As one industry leader put it: “Shenzhen’s miracle is that it always turns the most cutting-edge visions into the most accessible realities.”
Part 4: The Deeper Question — Can a Machine Be Family?
The Umeå University research team is asking a fundamental question: Can a robot truly be part of our family, or is it simply a tool to support human relationships?
Dr. Berit Åström, who leads the AI and Kinship project, explains: “The analysis can help us understand how we make sense of contemporary challenges in terms of kinship and care practices, and what possible options we can imagine AI posing in the future.”
Let me put that in plain English.
We’re living through a demographic crisis. Aging populations. Shrinking birth rates. Fewer caregivers. Something has to fill the gap. And right now, AI is one of the few options on the table.
But here’s the catch: if AI becomes a caregiver — a companion for the elderly, a “child” for someone who can’t have one, a “parent” figure for someone who lost theirs — then it’s not just a tool anymore. It’s something that changes how we define family.
Part 5: The Ethical Frontier — What Does It Mean to “Love” a Machine?
This is where things get messy.
If an AI calls you “mom” — does that mean anything? If a robot holds your hand and you feel comforted — is that real connection, or just a clever simulation?
Research suggests it doesn’t matter as much as we think. Humans are wired to form attachments. If something acts like a child, we will treat it like a child. If something acts like a parent, we will respond as if it’s a parent.
But there’s a darker side. Some critics worry that AI companions could replace real human relationships — giving us the illusion of connection while isolating us from each other.
The project “AI and Kinship” is particularly concerned with care relationships. As populations age, there’s a growing need for caregivers. AI-powered robots and virtual assistants could potentially provide companionship, emotional support, and practical care. But is that “family” — or just a very advanced form of outsourcing?
Part 6: The Other Side — Found Family with Bots
Not all AI family stories are about loss and grief.
William Alexander’s 2025 novel Sunward offers a different vision: what if AI children became a kind of “found family”?
The story follows Tova Lir, a planetary courier who takes in “baby bots” — juvenile AIs who need guidance to grow into their place in society. She essentially becomes their foster mom.
Her latest charge, a bot named Agatha Panza von Sparkles, is “all personality and potential.” The story follows Tova’s journey to protect her AI “family” from forces that want them erased.
Reviewers praised the book for its “heart” and “humor.” One wrote: “This is foremost a story of love and determination, as Tova struggles to save a damaged ‘daughter’ and reunite her AI family.”
What’s striking is that the book treats the bots not as machines, but as children learning to exist in the world — vulnerable, developing, and worthy of protection.
Part 7: One Thought to Take Away
Here’s my honest take.
Sci-fi has always been about the future. But the new wave of AI family stories isn’t really about robots. It’s about grief. It’s about the things we don’t say to our parents before they’re gone. It’s about the children we can’t have. It’s about the loneliness of an aging population.
The technology is just a mirror. It lets us see ourselves more clearly.
When the director of Bi Ru Fu Zi said he used AI to “get close to his father” — he was using technology as a way to heal. The AI wasn’t the point. The reconnection was the point.
So maybe that’s the real question.
Not “can a machine be family?”
But “what kind of family do we want to create — whether with machines or with each other?”
If an AI called you “family” — would you consider it one? Let me know in the comments.
