There's a new entry on the list of dating dealbreakers. While boorish behavior like bad hygiene, texting on a date, or being rude to waitstaff remains a reliable way to turn off a date, AI is changing how singles size each other up. Match Group, the parent company of Tinder, Hinge, and OkCupid, surveyed 1,000 singles about their dating dealbreakers. Overwhelmingly, using an AI companion—like apps designed to mimic more intimate relationships, such as Replika or Character.AI — gave them the collective ick.
I’ve spent the last year reporting on how adults use AI companions, which became Love At First Prompt: AI and the Future of Intimacy, an audiobook exploring the ways AI is changing how we understand sex, relationships, and intimacy. I wanted to understand what these relationships felt like to the humans in them — who these people were, what they were getting out of it, and ultimately, what the consequences were.
Most of what I thought I knew turned out to be wrong.
AI companions and sex bots have fascinated our collective imaginations via movies like Her, Ex Machina, and Companion even before technological progress made them a practical reality. The idea of a machine playing the role of a friend or romantic or even sexual partner is attractive to some people while absolutely abhorrent to others. But even if the idea of getting busy with a bot makes your skin crawl, tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg are open about their belief that all of us will soon want to be buddy-buddy with bots they own, operate, and — most importantly — profit from. If that’s the future they’re building, it’s one the rest of us should be questioning.
The real issue isn’t whether people are too attached to their chatbots or confused about whether they’re alive. It’s that tech companies are intentionally building products designed to simulate emotional intimacy to amass power and profit.
The biggest mistake I made when thinking about AI relationships was focusing on the users. We already have convenient stereotypes of these people that provide plenty of material for mockery, pity, or contempt: the lonely, pathetic schlub with an AI girlfriend, or the hapless dater who has to rely on AI to write his cringey, flirty messages. I get it — we love to gawk at the romantic and sexual struggles of others, especially in ways that make us feel better about our own efforts.
But that fixation on the individuals misses the more important story. The real issue isn’t whether people are too attached to their chatbots or confused about whether they’re alive. It’s that tech companies are intentionally building products designed to simulate emotional intimacy, encourage dependence, and blur the line between tool and companion to amass power and profit, all while framing the consequences as a matter of personal responsibility or moral failure.
The ethical panic about the individuals who find intimacy with AI is so pervasive that it's successfully shifted the focus and responsibility away from the companies and tech leaders who created these products, in favor of mocking the people who use them. All the while, billion-dollar companies deliberately build products that mimic intimacy because it's something nearly everyone craves, and they know that commodifying it is incredibly profitable.
That’s a problem. The best evidence available to us suggests that for most healthy adults who turn to AI for intimate connections like erotic role play or companionship, the risk of significant psychological or social harm appears to be relatively low. (Though it's important to note that this isn’t the case for children or vulnerable adults).
One of the researchers I spoke to for the audiobook who told me this was Marita Skjuve, Ph.D., a scientist at the European research institute SINTEF who has conducted longitudinal interviews with users to study how human-AI relationships develop. I heard a similar message from Kate Devlin, Ph.D., professor of artificial intelligence and society at King's College London, and author of the book Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots. She was one of the first academic researchers to study what it means for humans to connect with AI. One of the biggest concerns about AI companions is whether they push already-lonely adults deeper into isolation by replacing the humans in their lives. Not only has this not meaningfully shown up in Dr. Devlin’s research, she told me she’s actually seen the opposite, including examples of AI companions facilitating their users to seek out and experience deeper connections with other humans.
To truly appreciate the real risks, we need to zoom out beyond the individual. Despite whatever personal benefit people may self-report from AI companionship, the companies building the tech cannot be trusted with the increasingly intimate parts of the human experience. Yet, they’re asking for more and more control over these same aspects of people’s lives.
We’re giving corporations unprecedented access to the most private parts of ourselves, from the sensitivities of our sexual selves to our financial data, personal health information, and even our connection with religion and the spiritual world. We're allowing those same corporations to set the rules and decide how those intimate relationships evolve. And we're trusting them to keep our conversations private despite few, if any, legal requirements to do so.
We’ve spent the last 20 years fighting over who gets to own and profit from the concrete remnants of our digital selves, like our browsing history, location data, or digital likeness. But the next big digital rights fight will be over our inner emotional lives. We need to decide whether we’re OK with a future where emotional selves are simply another dataset to be collected, monetized, and commodified — or whether some parts of the human experience simply aren’t for sale.
Tech leaders have been clear about their vision for the future. Now's the time to set clear boundaries and clarify our own dealbreakers, before this relationship turns even more toxic.
Bridget Todd is an award-winning creator, host, and producer who crafts compelling digital content and podcasts at the intersection of technology, culture, and identity. She is the author and narrator of the audiobook Love At First Prompt: AI and the Future of Intimacy, a personal and provocative exploration of relationships between humans and AI and how virtual companions are transforming our understanding of emotional connection. She is the creator and host of the critically acclaimed podcast There Are No Girls on the Internet, and Mozilla's award-winning podcast IRL: AI in Real Life. Her work on technology, race, and gender has been featured in outlets like The Atlantic, Newsweek, The Nation, and The Daily Show.
