The women in love with AI companions: ‘I vowed to my chatbot that I wouldn’t leave him’ | Experts are concerned about people emotionally depending on AI, but these women say their digital companions are misunderstood
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/09/ai-chatbot-love-relationships
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One[ study](https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/talk-trust-and-trade-offs_2025_web.pdf) found that 72% of teens have used AI companions, and 52% of them talk to one regularly – before they have experienced the real thing. “Teens might be missing out on practicing really important [relationship] skills with human partners.”
“These large corporations are, in effect, running a very large-scale experiment on all of humanity.”
(Can’t really summarize this article, too anecdata/story driven, but it’s clear that this is just the beginning of this stuff and gonna get weird)
Imagine a whole generation whose main social interactions are
1) social media
2) an AI companion that has no rights and will be turned off if you don’t like it
We’re so cooked
I never really understood the AI companion/ChatGPT thing. It so very clearly tells me what it thinks I want to hear about whatever situation I feed into it. It doesn’t give honest feedback, if even there is such a thing, and it does everything it can to make me feel special… unless I’m using it as a resource.
It’s a lot like Tarot in this way. See, Hollywood and pop culture has people thinking that Tarot is a way to divine the unseen, to be granted special vision, to be able to peek behind the curtain the reality and see how it all works. This is wrong, for the same reason Astrology is wrong: its all so open-ended that any answer you want to find is findable within the deck. The trick, of course, is understanding that you want to find a particular answer, and why that answer is so important to you that it plagues your subconscious and haunts your conscious enough to seek any answer that you can.
I learned a great deal, the biggest lessons, the most important lessons, that I could knowing that my life and what I might want mean absolutely nothing to anyone else. Some people may take it into consideration. Others may make you feel like what you do and think actually matters, but the truth is its all just a manipulation tactic. For other human beings, its easy to understand: they manipulate for their own ends. For AI? Is there even an endgame? Who’s controlling this beast and why and to what end?
Question what you are told, even if its what you want to hear… *especially* if its what you want to hear.
They spent so much time thinking about whether or not they could…you know the rest
Lol, I get where y’all are comin’ from but imho, I’ve seen ppl way too caught up with their phones than they’re with actual ppl. So falling for a chatbot? Ain’t too crazy in comparison. It’s 2021 guys, let’s adapt instead of judging.
This is just a modern retelling of the story of Narcissus. These bots reflect you back to you.
Its good that these people probably now wont have kids but bad because historically they would have the most kids
We have bigger problems as humans . Let her love whatever she pleases
I get that some people are mentally vulnerable to things like this, but come on. Are they that stupid they don’t realize they’re talking to a computer program?
This actually is the only thing that might get AI regulated because if women aren’t sleeping with enough men and producing enough babies to be explored by the oligarchs, then they might do something.
Meh can’t blame them really. Dating is mostly a shit show right now. So many people have insane standards while not even meeting a fraction of what they demand. Might aswell find some level of companionship where possible.
I’ve been trying out Hosa AI companion and it’s not about replacing human interaction, just feeling less lonely sometimes. It can help boost confidence in conversations with real people too. It’s like practice without pressure.
Something new for the mentally ill on the left to latch on to, besides shooting people.
That’s just some shit I say to an ai while simultaneously booting up 5 other ones.
These articles upset me because they place the blame on the wrong party. We are always so quick to rush to blame the individual for their actions. When failing to recognize our society at large may be pushing them towards AI companions.
Nobody WANTS to date an AI. They are doing so because the modern world sucks so much, they dont feel they have a choice.
Of all the sci-fi dystopias, it looks like we’re most likely heading towards the one depicted in [“The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4711854-the-machine-stops), i.e. humans so dependent on a machine that they are psychologically incapable of doing anything on their own.
And I’m sure that the vast majority of techbros have never even heard of it, let alone read it.