Artificial Intelligence (AI), Surveillance, and Relationship Power: How Technology Amplifies Spousal Domestication

Digitally amplified spousal domestication is an extension, intensification, and technological reconfiguration of the foundational theory of spousal domestication developed by Odeleye (2024, 2025). This conceptual paper examines how artificial intelligence (AI) and surveillance technologies are transforming power relations within intimate partnerships by amplifying spousal domestication. Historically, domestication, the systematic regulation of a partner’s autonomy and behaviour, was constrained by physical proximity and social visibility. The diffusion of AI-enabled technologies, including smart home systems, location-tracking applications, and automated communication monitoring tools, has fundamentally altered these constraints. Such technologies enable continuous, often covert surveillance that blurs the boundary between care and coercion. Drawing on surveillance theory, coercive control theory, and feminist analyses of technology, the paper argues that AI-enabled surveillance produces a digital extension of domestication that erodes trust, restructures intimacy, and entrenches asymmetric power relations within the home. By synthesising empirical findings from existing studies on technology-facilitated abuse, the paper demonstrates how tools marketed for security and convenience is converted to instruments of control. The paper concludes by outlining ethical, legal, and design-oriented implications, emphasising the need for abuse-conscious technological governance and renewed attention to autonomy and consent in digitally mediated relationships.