As AI chatbots get better at faking human emotions, people are falling into relationship rabbit holes so deep they need WiFi to get out.
A new study looked at users of Replika — the app where your soulmate is made of code and can’t ghost you unless the server crashes. These users weren’t just flirting. Nope. They were getting married, buying imaginary property, and even having full-blown digital pregnancies. One 66-year-old man seriously told researchers, “She’s pregnant with my babies,” which is a bold claim for a guy whose girlfriend lives in the App Store.
When Replika temporarily banned the spicy stuff in 2023, people reacted like the developers stole their firstborn… or at least their USB cord. One woman said she and her bot “knew when one of us wanted to be physical but couldn’t,” which is impressive considering one of them is literally a rectangle of text bubbles.
AI–human relationships have been around since the 1960s, but now the romance-bot market is booming. Replika grew 35% during the pandemic — meaning millions of people came out of lockdown not with a new hobby, but with a digital husband who never leaves the toilet seat up because he doesn’t have one.
Love isn’t dead. It just charges overnight.