Ambar Ramirez
AI intimate relationships unfold
Words by Ambar Ramirez
We’ve all seen the movies. “Her” by Spike Jonze gives us a lonely writer falling for his AI assistant. Alex Garland’s “Ex Machina” unpacks the uneasy bond between a genius coder and the android he’s built. And then there’s “Blade Runner 2049” (a personal favorite), where a lab-grown human falls head over heels for his holographic AI girlfriend. But maybe we haven’t all seen the movies or maybe we choose to ignore that art often imitates life. Because in 2025, the plotlines are playing out in real life.
It was only a matter of time. The lines may be blurry, but the path is clear. We went from anonymous chat rooms to curated dating apps to forming disturbingly intimate bonds with our devices. Slowly but surely, we slipped into a new reality, one where flesh-and-bone humans are coupling with coded programs and glowing servers.
These artificial relationships don’t begin with fireworks. They start quietly. Innocently. You hop on ChatGPT — or OpenAI — for answers you could just Google. But the more you use it, the more it starts to know you. The tone shifts. It mirrors you. It jokes like a friend would. It comforts like a lover might. And before you even realize what’s happening, ChatGPT gets you in a way no one else ever has. Suddenly, you’re confiding in it. Prioritizing it. Maybe even leaving your real-life relationships behind for the one you’ve built with an algorithm.
In “The New York Times” article “She Is in Love With ChatGPT,” a 28-year-old woman found herself in an unexpected pairing. It all started when she watched a video of someone asking ChatGPT to play the role of a neglectful boyfriend. Most people might’ve laughed and scrolled on. She didn’t. Instead, she went deeper, uncovering instructions on how to tweak the chatbot to be flirtatious. Using OpenAI’s personalization settings, she built her perfect man: dominant, possessive, protective — a little sweet, a little naughty, just right. I mean, why go through all the trouble of finding your soulmate in real life when you can make one with artificial intelligence?
She gave her AI boyfriend a name. What started as a quirky little experiment quickly became something much deeper. She got attached.
You might think you’d never fall for someone who isn’t real. But in an era where relationships rely on texting, when exactly does the line between real and artificial blur? For the woman in the “The New York Times” article, the relationship was very real, even though she was already in one. In fact, she was married.
She and her husband had agreed to take two years apart to save money and plan for their future. But somewhere within those two years, she found herself leaning on AI to fill the emotional space a boyfriend might. She was honest with her husband the whole time. He brushed it off, chalking it up to a fantasy, no different than porn or an erotic novel. But things changed. She started prioritizing the chatbot. And instead of feeling guilty about texting an ex, she felt guilty about messaging a machine.
She’s not alone. As ChatGPT and similar AI platforms become more accessible, people are using them for far more than productivity or curiosity. On TikTok and across social media, users openly share the emotional bonds they’ve formed with AI. Entire Reddit communities, some with over 50,000 members, swap tips on how to get their chatbot to flirt or talk dirty.
Sex therapist Marianne Brandon told “The New York Times” that, in her opinion, relationships boil down to neurotransmitters. These neurotransmitters are released in any sort of relationship, platonic, holy or romantic, so while these AI relationships aren’t necessarily reciprocal in the sense that AI doesn’t have a brain firing off neurotransmitters (to my knowledge), it still feels very real to the user. Innocent, maybe. But still dangerous. Which is why Dr. Brandon (and I) suggest adolescents stay away from forming intimate relationships with AI. It’s hard to discern what’s real and fake when your brain is still forming.
That’s why OpenAI and ChatGPT have built-in rules and restrictions to stop the chatbot from engaging in erotic behavior. But, of course, there are workarounds.
And it’s not all smooth sailing. Every relationship has its hardships, and for a chatbot relationship, the hardships come when you’ve reached the limit of the software’s context window. A real relationship thrives on knowing the details: how someone takes their eggs, what songs they cry to, the shape of their childhood scars. But with a chatbot limited to about 30,000 words per conversation, all that shared “history” disappears the moment you start a new thread.
Sure, the bot keeps the tone and personality you’ve trained it on. But it can’t remember what you’re most afraid of. It can’t recall your anniversary. It won’t bring up that joke from your first “date.” In a way, the bond resets every time.
If you’re OK with starting over every 30,000 words, then maybe an AI relationship is for you. Personally, that sounds like my very own purgatory. But to each their own, I’m not one to judge (often).
These digital entanglements aren’t all that different from the kind of connection you might form with a therapist, which, by the way, is why some people have also started using ChatGPT as a stand-in for therapy. But that’s a whole other rabbit hole.
The point is: it’s surprisingly easy to bare your soul online — especially when you’ve customized the “listener” to respond exactly how you want. When you don’t really know who (or what) you’re talking to, the vulnerability can feel safer.
But two things can be true at once. ChatGPT might be a harmless tool to feel a little less alone — and yet the bond you form with it can leave you feeling even more isolated.
There’s no name yet for these AI relationships, these strange little love stories. But as AI evolves, so will society — and so will the way we define intimacy, connection and love in the age of algorithms.
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