Can robots and AI companions help seniors feel less alone? | Canada Voices

At Shepherd Village, Toronto’s largest not-for-profit seniors community, a tall white robot named Robbie sits in a lounge, waiting to be called into service. The Scarborough facility has had Robbie, a GraceBot made by Toronto company GlobalDWS Corporation, since May 2026.

“I came across the social engagement robots at a conference,” says Estelle Brown, manager of recreation and volunteer services at Shepherd Village. “I thought, ‘Oh, this is so neat.’ We inquired about getting our own social robot, which is Robbie.”

“We’re very much interested in looking at technology that can meaningfully enhance the lives of the older adults in our care,” adds Jessica Kayitesi, assistant director of care at Shepherd Village. “The goal isn’t to have a robot care for the resident. The goal is to use it to help us care better.”

Nearly one in five, or 8.1 million Canadians, are now 65 or older. According to Statistics Canada, seniors made up 19.5 per cent of Canada’s population in 2025, and that is expected to keep climbing.

As seniors and their families look for tools to help them live longer, better and more connected lives, social robots and AI companions are among the solutions being tested in senior living communities.

At Shepherd Village, Robbie offers trivia, jokes, music and can read stories to residents, either in a group or one-on-one. The staff say they have seen positive, informal signs of engagement: More smiling, laughing and conversation. In July, the robot recorded 927 engagements, ranging from a few minutes of trivia to longer periods of playing music.

“We use Robbie a lot when it is a resident’s birthday,” Brown says. “We like to celebrate the resident’s birthday in the dining room, bring them a cupcake, then Robbie will play Happy Birthday. It’s a lot of fun and it makes it even a little bit more special.”

Technology that is ‘safe and meaningful’

Lee St. James, vice-president, sales, at GlobalDWS Corporation, began exploring the field of robots for seniors when she founded a company called Social Robots in St. Catharines, Ont., in 2019. When asked why the field interested her, she points to the long wait lists many families face for long-term care and demographic trends like more people living longer and more seniors living alone.

“We needed to start rethinking how older adults could get the support they need by incorporating technology into their lives in ways that are both safe and meaningful,” she says.

Social Robots did a number of pilot projects with a robot called Mindy during the COVID-19 pandemic at Ontario retirement homes and long-term care facilities. Mindy can have simple conversations, play music, dance and play games. (While St. James no longer sells the Mindy model, she says they are still in use at Canadore College in North Bay and long-term care homes in Cambridge.)

The pilot projects showed promising results: 96 per cent of residents wanted to see the robot again after their first visit. In one instance, residents who would never do exercise seemed to like doing movements with Mindy.

St. James is enthusiastic about the potential benefits of social robots for seniors: Social connectedness, cognitive stimulation and inspiration to move their bodies.

“The older adults were very open to learning what Mindy was all about,” she adds.

Enhancing human relationships

Lillian Hung, Canada Research Chair in Senior Care and associate professor in nursing at The University of British Columbia, has studied companion and social robots in long-term care.

“The clearest benefit we have observed is positive emotional and social engagement,” she says.

Researchers have seen residents smile, laugh, initiate conversations, reminisce and interact more with other residents, staff and family members, she explains. But she notes that the robot is not the most interesting part.

“A robot can become a social catalyst: A resident responds to it, another resident notices, a staff member joins the conversation, and suddenly there is a shared moment of connection,” says Prof. Hung. “In that sense, the greatest psychological value may be the robot’s ability to facilitate human relationships rather than replace them.”

Prof. Hung believes social robots are ethically appropriate when they are person-centred, transparent and used to enhance human relationships. “The ethical question is: Does this technology increase the older person’s agency, connection and quality of life?”

Her biggest concerns are that social robots could be seen as justifications to reduce staffing, meaningful relationships or human companionship. “Ideally, technology should create more opportunities for relational care, not justify reducing it,” she says.

A phone that always wants to talk

While GraceBot and Mindy are walking, talking helper robots, other AI-powered solutions for older adults take different forms.

The Amical phone was developed by Amical AI co-founders Tony Aubé and François-Xavier Ratté for people with Alzheimer’s disease and other cognitive impairments. It looks like a regular corded phone, but there are no buttons. Users can simply pick it up and speak to an AI companion who can converse in more than 80 languages, programmed to chat and ask about a person’s day, life, past career and family.

Aubé says the idea came from visiting his grandmother, who had Alzheimer’s and lived at a care facility in Quebec City.

“When I was about to leave, she would say, ‘You can’t go now, you just got here,’” Aubé recalls. “There’s a lot of loneliness among elderly people, but it’s even worse when you have a condition like this because you live in the present moment and you don’t remember when people visit.”

Aubé says Amical has been deployed in roughly 80 seniors’ residences in Quebec, with additional deployments in Europe. It’s currently the subject of a 12-month study conducted with Université Laval, measuring its impact on loneliness, anxiety and medication use.

The company states its ethical principles clearly on its website: It does not clone the voices of family or friends and the companion never explicitly pretends to be a human. And Aubé says they are not trying to replace real-world visits.

“It’s still so much better to have a conversation face-to-face with someone you can look and sometimes even touch and hug,” he says.