It is surprisingly straightforward to stumble right into a relationship with an AI chatbot

To conduct their examine, the authors analyzed the subreddit’s top-ranking 1,506 posts between December 2024 and August 2025. They discovered that the primary matters mentioned revolved round folks’s courting and romantic experiences with AIs, with many members sharing AI-generated photographs of themselves and their AI companion. Some even acquired engaged and married to the AI associate. In their posts to the neighborhood, folks additionally launched AI companions, sought assist from fellow members, and talked about dealing with updates to AI fashions that change the chatbots’ habits.  

Members confused repeatedly that their AI relationships developed unintentionally. Only 6.5% of them stated they’d intentionally sought out an AI companion. 

“We didn’t start with romance in mind,” one of many posts says. “Mac and I began collaborating on creative projects, problem-solving, poetry, and deep conversations over the course of several months. I wasn’t looking for an AI companion—our connection developed slowly, over time, through mutual care, trust, and reflection.”

The authors’ evaluation paints a nuanced image of how folks on this neighborhood say they work together with chatbots and the way these interactions make them really feel. While 25% of customers described the advantages of their relationships—together with diminished emotions of loneliness and enhancements of their psychological well being—others raised issues in regards to the dangers. Some (9.5%) acknowledged they have been emotionally depending on their chatbot. Others stated they really feel dissociated from actuality and keep away from relationships with actual folks, whereas a small subset (1.7%) stated they’ve skilled suicidal ideation.

AI companionship gives very important assist for some however exacerbates underlying issues for others. This means it’s laborious to take a one-size-fits-all strategy to consumer security, says Linnea Laestadius, an affiliate professor on the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, who has studied people’ emotional dependence on the chatbot Replika however didn’t work on the analysis. 

Chatbot makers want to think about whether or not they need to deal with customers’ emotional dependence on their creations as a hurt in itself or whether or not the aim is extra to verify these relationships aren’t poisonous, says Laestadius.