There is a growing desire to provide artificial beings with social intelligence. What interactions are established with these beings? How can sociology study them? This article reviews existing work on the subject and proposes a new direction. The author first draws on work that has challenged a dualist approach in terms of broad sharing to constitute ontology as an object. She then presents research on the anthropomorphization of machines, investigating operations of ontological determination of artificial beings from both a design and a uses perspective. This highlights the fact that the question of ontology arises at the point of engaging in interaction, and is motivated by the desire to find adjusted modalities of cohabitation. Finally, the article proposes further research along the same lines, that pays greater attention to actors’ ontological reflexivity.