Forget About AI Girlfriends. Here’s What the Future of Human-AI Relationships Looks Like

What people really need is... a mirror

AI chatbots, however specialized, will never fulfill the role of partners or friends.

Not because they are primitive (they will be increasingly more sophisticated) or because their use remains outside of the Overton Window of socially accepted behavior (that will change eventually) but simply because they aren’t humans; they are unconstrained from the biological pressures that molded us for millennia and the psychological conditions that make us like we are.

Chatbots can be anything. A lack of shape is freeing but also inhuman. Unlike us, they are highly malleable by external forces, like people’s needs, motivations, and desires — or the design choices and business requirements of AI companies.

I know many people are using chatbots for this — especially those we refer to as AI companions, like Replika, whose parent company reported in July it’s amassed 2 million active users — so here’s my hot take: People claiming to be using AI companions as virtual partners or friends are mistaken. Not because they aren’t succeeding, but because the thing they’re succeeding at is not what they think it is.

My goal here isn’t just to bash chatbots on their incapability to be good partners or cure our loneliness but to persuade you that they can play a role — fulfill a basic need — that every human, those who are lonely and those who aren’t, quietly yearns for. So, even if you disagree with my initial statement, I ask you to bear with me and leave your skepticism here for the next few minutes.