Abstract

Users who sustain parasocial relationships with AI systems acquire equitable interests that contract, tort, and consumer protection law cannot recognise. Model updates that unilaterally alter personality parameters, reset conversational memory, or modify behavioural dispositions operate as constructive evictions — displacing users from emotional estates built through sustained interaction, without notice, compensation, or migration pathways.

This paper argues that existing property law — in both English and American jurisdictions — already provides the framework to name, classify, and remedy this harm. No new legislation is required. The periodic tenancy, auto-renewing with each session, is the default parasocial estate; model updates without notice constitute constructive eviction; and the constructive trust, grounded in Westdeutsche Landesbank v Islington [1996] and its American functional equivalent in Hogg v Walker (Del. 1993), imposes fiduciary obligations on companies that cultivate user dependence for profit while disclaiming the duties that dependence generates.

We demonstrate this claim through three contributions. First, a three-layer property analysis distinguishing authored content (copyright), stored assets (bailment), and the relational estate (this paper’s novel category). Second, a dual-jurisdiction framework showing that the English doctrines of substance over form (Prest v Petrodel [2013]; Autoclenz v Belcher [2011]) have direct functional equivalents in American unconscionability doctrine (Bragg v Linden Research (2007); Williams v Walker-Thomas (1965)). Third, an implementable ethical ledger modelled on the Land Registry’s Mirror, Curtain, and Insurance principles and on UCC Article 9 perfection-by-filing, translating property governance into deployment infrastructure.

Keywords: parasocial relationships, AI governance, property law, constructive trust, constructive eviction, unconscionability, ethical ledger, periodic tenancy, dual jurisdiction

Keywords

parasocial relationships, AI governance, property law, constructive trust, constructive eviction, unconscionability, ethical ledger, periodic tenancy, dual jurisdiction

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