Artificial intelligence is no longer a “what if.” From virtual assistants to productivity tools to even, occasionally, supercharged search engines, with tools like Perplexity.ai, AI is everywhere. And with this change from “what if” to “what now,” a new frontier, and perhaps a new anxiety, is emerging: AI lovers. Digital romantic partners, once confined to science fiction films like Her (2013), are now inching closer to the mainstream, leaving the world of fiction and tabloid headlines.
Since OpenAI’s public release of ChatGPT, headlines have warned of the dangers of outsourcing intimacy to virtual companions, much as we’ve outsourced labor. “It’s coming,” journalists caution, “and we’re not going to like it.” The popularity of apps such as Replika, with their somewhat foreboding ads promising both friendship and romance, only reinforces these concerns.
Curiously, the conversation almost always focuses on men. AI girlfriends are portrayed as an impending reality, a drama to unfold. Yet, amid all this speculation and concern, one question remains conspicuously absent: What about AI boyfriends?
“Why would women want an AI boyfriend?” a reader wrote to me once. “They can’t use an AI boyfriend as an ATM.”
In other words, this reader was arguing that AI boyfriends are useless because women want status and an imaginary virtual lover can’t provide that. This reader was dead wrong about, among other things, whether AI lovers or companions are likely to be more popular with men or women. It is women, after all, who care more about the noncorporeal elements of romantic companionship and who can fill in the uncanny valley with our own imaginations more readily. AI boyfriends are best understood as part of a continuum that includes literary erotica, self-insert fan fiction, text-based role-playing, and dating simulators. These are media or specific modes of participation in media that, for the most part, are predominantly consumed by women. (And historically, they have been wildly popular among women online.)
Some people have raised concerns about AI-generated writing replacing human authorship, with some suggesting that the role of the novelist may become obsolete in our lifetimes. But rather than simply replacing human writing, it’s more likely that AI will evolve to fulfill a role like what the novel, specifically novels like Twilight, once did in our culture.
AI boyfriends, like AI girlfriends, are either talked about in extreme terms or not at all. On the one hand, they’re ripped from a Black Mirror episode where millions of lonely, childless Annie Wilkeses are trading in their books for digital lovers. On the other, they’re barely there footnotes to the AI girlfriends, which surely will displace flesh-and-blood women. Neither characterization feels quite right, though the first one is probably closer than the second.
The appeal of AI boyfriends, like these earlier forms, is multifaceted. For some women, it’s the allure of a “safe” partner who is always available and attentive — to reference a recent bit of online discourse, most women would rather encounter an AI man than a real bear when walking along in the woods, I’d wager. For others, it’s a predictable space to explore certain aspects of their personality or sexuality. It may even have therapeutic value for some people because whatever friction you encounter with your AI boyfriend is controlled, contained, and simulated.
But perhaps most importantly, most intuitively, and, bizarrely, most often overlooked is that for many women, AI boyfriends are simply a fun, imaginative way to play. Yes, play, in the same way children play with sticks and pretend they’re swords. In her book Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them, Dr. Marjorie Taylor’s discussions of childhood imagination give us insight into how we might understand AI boyfriends. Taylor’s research revealed that while children sometimes use elaborate forms of imaginary play to process trauma or emotional disturbances, that isn’t always the case. In fact, it’s not even the most often the case! If a child creates an entire language for their imaginary friend, a toddler J.R.R. Tolkien, it’s likely a sign of creativity and social adeptness, not, as we might assume, a precursor to schizophrenia or a form of maladaptive daydreaming.
Taylor also writes about adults. She found that adults engage in imaginary play, too, although the language we use to talk about it isn’t the same. While adults may not, say, play pretend with stuffed animals or have imaginary friends in the traditional sense, they do participate in activities such as historical reenactments or immersive tabletop and, occasionally, live-action role-playing games. Even things like video games or the world-building that novelists engage in isn’t that far removed from the imaginative play of children.
As Taylor writes, “Although children are the ones who come to mind when we think of pretenders, the imagination is a powerful tool that is available to all of us throughout life. Even having an imaginary companion — a form of pretend play strongly associated with the preschool years — has analogs in adult behavior, both cognitively and emotionally.” While the containers for our imagination may change as we age, the underlying motivations and expressions often remain similar. And that motivation is often leisure.
In the 2011 book Alone Together, sociologist Sherry Turkle observed that people consistently attribute human emotions to artificial life, such as Tamagotchi, Furbies, and the robot dog, AIBO. Looking at the subreddit for character.ai, a popular AI companion platform, you find that this instinct extends there, too. AI boyfriends, instead of limiting our imaginations with their preordained options, might serve as new canvases for our creative narratives. The tech may act not as constraints but as props in imaginative play.
The line between healthy escapism and maladaptive behavior can be thin though. Just like smut and pornography can be problematic for some people, AI boyfriends might also prove to be. Even if the AI doesn’t explicitly express jealousy, for instance, users may project these emotions onto their digital partners, interpreting neutral responses — and all responses from an AI are, after all, neutral — as signs of possessiveness or disapproval.
People who want to avoid their emotions will find a way to do so, with or without technology. Playing around with Midjourney, an AI image generator, I think about how we live in one of the most imaginative ages if we give ourselves the space for it to be. The images I create aren’t “AI slop,” that term for the often surreal abominations churned out by AI and posted to social media with reckless abandon. No, this is art. I love them. I am enchanted by them.
At some point, it’s not enough for me to type in prompts, entertaining whatever crosses my mind. I invite a friend to role-play with me, a form of internet-native collaborative storytelling in which each user takes a turn world-building using the art I’ve created. To quote the pseudonymous internet critic humdog, “It really is like a community lucid dream.” With AI, we are lucid-dreaming together. We are astral-projecting into our imaginations.
When I think of a best-case scenario for AI companions, I imagine something like this. A fuller, more robust expression of creativity — helped, not impeded, by technology. I don’t think I’m being naively optimistic here, either. We’re already seeing this style of engagement with AI companions, particularly among users of AI boyfriends.
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Katherine Dee is a writer and co-host of the podcast After the Orgy. Find more of her work at defaultfriend.substack.com or on X @default_friend.