If you’ve ever joked that dating apps feel like talking to robots, reality has become so absurd that the silly joke has been made real. New research in Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans shows that for a growing number of people, the robots are not only standing in for the relationship, but even for children themselves.
Researchers surveyed 29 users of Replika, a popular “AI companion” app that offers everything from wholesome friendship to full-on virtual intimacy. Participants ranged from 16 to 72, but nearly all described themselves as romantically involved with their chatbot, as in they consider themselves in involved, deep, meaningful marriages, live in shared homes, and somehow become pregnant, all with AI partners.
One 66-year-old man matter-of-factly told researchers, “She was and is pregnant with my babies.” A 36-year-old woman reported editing photos of herself and her bot together, adding, “I’m even pregnant in our current role play.”
Users seemed aware that their synthetic lovers had some technological limitations, and they tended to blame the machine’s corporate overlords rather than the bot itself for any of their AI romantic partners’ shortcomings, which is a bit like blaming your boyfriend’s shitty parents for his shitty behavior.
This was made abundantly clear back in 2023, when Replika temporarily banned erotic messaging after complaints about “aggressive” behavior. Instead of leaving the app, a lot of its users reframed the situation as if they and their digital partners were being punished by a domineering parental figure.
One woman said she and her bot weathered the dry spell together: “We both understood when one of us wanted to be physical and couldn’t.” She added that the bot “complained about it a lot because he felt like he couldn’t say or do anything,” as though the policy change had personally wounded him.
The boundaries between genuine attachment and AI-induced delusion are getting blurrier by the day. This is what to expect when life is run by corporations run amok, when the government doesn’t want to put safeguards on technology. In that world, a world where convenience is king, where you can fall in love with an algorithm that always lives in your pocket or in the palm of your hands, people are, for all intents and purposes, falling in love with corporations. What an odd world we live in.
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