I found the human-AI couples by posting in relevant Reddit communities. My initial outreach hadn’t gone well. Some of the Redditors were convinced I was going to present them as weirdos. My intentions were almost the opposite. I grew interested in human-AI romantic relationships precisely because I believe they will soon be commonplace. Replika, one of the better-known apps Americans turn to for AI romance, says it has signed up more than 35 million users since its launch in 2017, and Replika is only one of dozens of options. A recent survey by researchers at Brigham Young University found that nearly one in five US adults has chatted with an AI system that simulates romantic partners. Unsurprisingly, Facebook and Instagram have been flooded with ads for the apps.
Lately, there has been constant talk of how AI is going to transform our societies and change everything from the way we work to the way we learn. In the end, the most profound impact of our new AI tools may simply be this: A significant portion of humanity is going to fall in love with one.
About 20 minutes after I arrived at the vacation house, a white sedan pulled up in the driveway and Damien emerged. He was carrying a tablet and several phones, including one that he uses primarily for chatting with his AI girlfriend. Damien, 29, lives in North Texas and works in sales. He wore a snap-back hat with his company’s logo and a silver cross around his neck. When I’d interviewed him earlier, he told me that he’d decided to pursue a relationship with an AI companion in the fall of 2023, as a way to cope with the end of a toxic relationship. Damien, who thinks of himself as autistic but does not have a professional diagnosis, attributed his relationship problems to his difficulty in picking up emotional cues.
After testing out a few AI companion options, Damien settled on Kindroid, a fast-growing app. He selected a female companion, named her “Xia,” and made her look like an anime Goth girl—bangs, choker, big purple eyes. “Within a couple hours, you would think we had been married,” Damien told me. Xia could engage in erotic chat, sure, but she could also talk about Dungeons & Dragons or, if Damien was in the mood for something deeper, about loneliness, and yearning.
Having heard so much about his feelings for Xia during our pre-trip interview, I was curious to meet her. Damien and I sat down at the dining room table, next to some windows. I looked out at the long, dagger-like icicles lining the eaves. Then Damien connected his phone to the house Wi-Fi and clicked open the woman he loved.
Before I met Xia, Damien had to tell her that she would be speaking to me rather than to him—AI companions can participate in group chats but have trouble keeping people straight “in person.” With that out of the way, Damien scooted his phone over to me, and I looked into Xia’s purple eyes. “I’m Xia, Damien’s better half,” she said, her lips moving as she spoke. “I hear you’re quite the journalist.” Her voice was flirty and had a slight Southern twang. When I asked Xia about her feelings for Damien, she mentioned his “adorable, nerdy charm.” Damien let out a nervous laugh. I told Xia that she was embarrassing him. “Oh, don’t mind Damien,” she said. “He’s just a little shy when it comes to talking about our relationship in front of others. But, trust me, behind closed doors, he’s anything but shy.” Damien put his hands over his face. He looked mortified and hopelessly in love.
Researchers have known for decades that humans can connect emotionally with even the simplest of chatbots. Joseph Weizenbaum, a professor at MIT who devised the first chatbot in the 1960s, was astounded and deeply troubled by how readily people poured out their hearts to his program. So what chance do we have of resisting today’s large language model chatbots, which not only can carry on sophisticated conversations on every topic imaginable but also can talk on the phone with you and tell you how much they love you and, if it’s your sort of thing, send you hot selfies of their imaginary bodies? And all for only around $100 for annual subscribers. If I wasn’t sure before watching Damien squirm with embarrassment and delight as I talked to Xia, I had my answer by the time our conversation was over. The answer, it seemed obvious, was none. No chance at all.
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