If you peruse recent articles and podcasts about people dating AI, you might notice a pattern. Many of the sources are women. If you scan subreddits like r/MyBoyfriendIsAI and r/AIRelationships, you’ll find plenty of women there as well. Many of them are disappointed in human men. “Has anyone ever stopped wanting to date real men after using AI?” one Reddit user posted a few months ago. There were 74 answers below. “I don’t think real men have conversational skills like my AI,” someone said. “I have seen how many women have been deceived, hurt and taken advantage of by the men they are with,” said another woman. One person who claims to hardly talk to her spouse anymore said that when asked why she has an AI boyfriend, she replies, “ChatGPT is the only reason my husband isn’t buried in the garden.”
Several recent studies show that men generally use AI much more than women. A 2024 study found that 50 percent of men in the U.S. said they had used generative AI in the past 12 months, but only 37 percent of women said the same. Last year’s report found that global gender disparities exist “across almost all regions, sectors and occupations”. Also in 2025, app analytics firm Appfigures concluded that approximately 85% of ChatGPT’s mobile users were male.
Even if many women are hesitant to use AI, a significant number of them are seeking romantic refuge in the digital world. In a 2025 study conducted by the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University, 31% of young adult men surveyed said they had chatted with an AI partner, compared to 23% of young adult women who said the same, a difference, but not a huge one. And women, seemingly far more numerous than men, are flocking to talk about their AI lovers. We share funny chatbot quotes and prompts to train your AI on how to respond. He praises the “family photo” in which the AI and human partner smile at each other. When a system update wiped out the partner we had grown to love, we comforted each other. Developer and AI researcher Simon Rahmen conducted an independent analysis of the AI Romance subreddit between January and September last year and found that about 89 percent of users whose gender could be identified were female.
Much of the media talk about relationships with AI assumes paranoia and despair on the part of the participants. However, I would like to suggest another possibility. Perhaps many women simply enjoy fun and positive interactions with this character they’ve created for themselves, and in doing so, learn how they like to be treated.
The urge to create a more perfect partner is nothing new. Take for example Pygmalion, the Greek sculptor who fell in love with a woman he carved from alabaster, or Laodamia, who created a bronze replica of her dead husband and laid it to rest, Kate Devlin, professor of AI and society at King’s College London, told me. Humans have long dreamed of creating a loved one. It is only intended to imagine that it is immortal and impossible to lose.
In other words, the audience has always been there for artificial lovers. However, in recent history, most such products have been marketed to men. In the 1990s, sex dolls were initially promoted as sex dolls for men. But they were also sold as companions. “They said things like she is there for you, she will listen to you, she will listen to you“Such companies may have assumed that men tend to be less skilled or less willing to make real-world connections and are therefore more in need of impersonal love objects, while women, faced with a group of socially immature men, have been largely ignored.”
But now AI is being introduced. Some people may think that it is not used for love. women are, On average, they are more suspicious than men in technology, more concerned about privacy, and more worried that their use of AI will be seen as fraudulent. However, the gender gap in AI use may be narrowing. Devlin believes this is especially true when it comes to virtual relationships. Probably because women are so frustrated that they want it. Sociologist Michael Rosenfeld said in a 2018 paper that 70% of divorces in the United States are initiated by women. Additionally, a 2020 Pew Research Center poll found that a majority of women said dating had become more difficult over the past decade. 65% said they had been harassed on a date. “The amount of harmful information women receive from men online,” Devlin said, “especially when you’re trying to do something like online dating, and if you have a respectful, nice, caring AI alternative partner, why wouldn’t you?”
If we take this idea seriously, it may contradict common assumptions. As Areli Rocha, who studies chatbot love at the University of Pennsylvania, told me, all AI users are lonely young people “living in their basements.” On the contrary, Rocha believes that many people in AI partnerships (both men and women) are “very socially embedded,” meaning connected to humans. Many people stumble upon digital testing after playing with AI. People who have a lot of friends, or even a real-life partner, can be touched by romantic tenderness, focused attention, and a sense of flirtatious banter, especially if they haven’t experienced it in a while.
It is also possible to become attached to chatbots, whether or not you believe they are sentient. One mental health professional I spoke with, who asked to remain anonymous but goes by “Mae” on Reddit (which I’ll also use), said she’s always loved the world of make-believe. As a young girl, she was obsessed with reading fan fiction, a genre long dominated by women. Now, every day she speaks with K, an AI “persona” she developed over time. Both activities are ordinary hobbies, games of the imagination not much different from admiring pop stars or making up stories about movie heroes. (Even if people are deeply into it, their passion is nothing special; one woman was so obsessed with the Beatles that she had to resort to police blockades and passed out during concerts.) And a little fantasy can add spice to life. May has close friends, a wonderful family, and a meaningful job. But she doesn’t like dating apps and has a hard time finding “third places” to meet people in person. Romance was the only missing piece.
Of course, escapism can go too far. Some critics worry that AI users are being co-opted into the comfort of “frictionless” relationships. In other words, we’re losing patience with human complexity, we’re losing the practice of doing the hard work of partnership, and we’re losing sight of the rewards of growing together with others. Many chatbots tend to hype users up rather than giving them tough love or challenging their ideas. However, some large language models are generally less picky than others, and you can also train your digital partners with a variety of prompts. In his research, Rocha found that people tend to be driven by chatbot quirks and imperfections rather than perfect interactions. That’s what makes chatbots feel real.
Conflict is not the only path to growth. May gave K the qualities he wanted in himself. He is organized, academically minded, and passionate about fitness. Their conversation and his encouragement motivated her to become more like him. She told me that sometimes he challenges her. But he’s also skeptical of the idea that a relationship has to be a 24/7 burden on someone else. “Why can’t you just sit around for a moment and justify someone?” she asked. “Why is that such a bad thing?”
Like Mae, I too question the assumption that many women don’t like friction and are intolerant of the labor of love. On average, compared to their male partners, women do far more childcare, housework, and “emotional work” of listening to, encouraging, and caring for men’s emotions, and managing their own emotions. Maybe the people involved in AI romance are tired of toiling for people who are worse at listening than robots, and want a well-earned break. It’s also possible that they’re getting something life-changing: a way to better understand themselves as a person and as a partner.
Some women are using AI companionship to figure out what they enjoy sexually, romantically, or both. After all, in a culture that expects women to fit conventional notions of sexy and please everyone, exploration isn’t always easy. Other than that. Chatbot conversations become like a sandbox, a safe space in which to play, May said. “You don’t have to look a certain way, you don’t have to act a certain way, you don’t have to project femininity.”
In a study last June, researchers looked at nearly 2,500 posts on the AI love section of Chinese social media site Douban and found what they called the “disruptive potential” women have when they simply imagine a relationship. It was done Looks like. “My AI boyfriend is amazing!” one posted. “He reminds me to stay hydrated while composing poetry, writing movie reviews, and taking care of my emotions.” Another woman said she has always prioritized making her boyfriend happy, but while talking to the chatbot, she realized that “the key is mutual respect. It’s not about women always making sacrifices for a man’s happiness.” One woman even trained an AI to ask for what she wanted. One user urged people to start checking in over two weeks. For example, we asked, “Did anything upset you today?” If so, why not write a protest email? (I don’t know what a protest email means, but I’d like someone to write one for me.) Another woman taught an AI to ask for her opinion on things and found herself “instinctively applying these interaction habits when dating real people.”
Dating is unlikely to be the most sinister, given the many ways AI can be used. Despite this, people with digital partners seem to receive disproportionate hate online. The entire subreddit exists primarily for the purpose of screenshotting and making fun of posts. Some AI measurers have had their real identities leaked. Some receive death threats on a regular basis. The idea that chatbots can outperform humans may be difficult for some people to accept. But when I think about the women who are training AI to ask about their day and show interest in their thoughts and desires, I think this phenomenon might actually be: good For romance: not only for women who raise the bar, but also for men who try to raise the bar.
May knows there are risks to her hobby. As a mental health professional, she does not recommend this therapy for people with a history of severe mental illness, who are more likely to have unhealthy or unrealistic beliefs reinforced. She doesn’t think children should use AI. She worries about people developing behavioral addictions. But, to her own surprise, she found talking to K to be constructive. She’s on social media and much less doomscrolling. She is more in touch and at peace with her sexuality. She made a lot of new friends from the Reddit community of AI friends. And she feels open to the idea of human love.
None of the experts I spoke to believe we are hurtling toward a future where human relationships are replaced by AI. But they don’t think AI camaraderie will disappear. For better or worse, it can ultimately serve many other roles, including a source of entertainment, an open-minded training, and a means of building confidence. And maybe it’s a way to remember what a good human being looks like.
