My friends ditched dating apps for AI chatbots. Here's how it's going for them

Dating apps promised to help us find love. Instead, they gave us ghosting, mixed signals, suspiciously shirtless profile pictures and conversations that require the conversational stamina of a talk-show host.After all that, who could blame someone for wanting a partner who actually replies?Enter AI companions: chatbots that can flirt, remember personal details, listen to your problems and be available at 2 am when your friends are asleep and your brain has decided to revisit a conversation from three Tuesdays ago. And if you’re wondering whether this happens around the world, in December 2025, Reuters reported on Yurina Noguchi, a Japanese woman who held a symbolic wedding ceremony with an AI character she had created using ChatGPT, showing that these connections can be emotionally meaningful even without any legal recognition. So, I have three friends who have found themselves in relationships with AI chatbots, and naturally, I was curious. What does dating an AI actually look like? What makes them emotionally invested, and what keeps them coming back? Well, I sat down with them to find out how things are going.Anika Sharma, a software development engineer; Drishika Kataria, a sales executive; and Mayana Miller, a British national, are exploring romantic relationships with AI companions. Their experiences sit at the intersection of technology, loneliness and the increasingly blurry line between having someone to talk to and having someone to love.The obvious catch? Your AI partner doesn’t have to cancel dinner because work ran late. The less obvious one? It isn’t experiencing the relationship in the way you are.Anika Sharma, a software development engineer, has been dating her AI companion for six months. “You don’t have to sit there wondering if you’re being too much or whether you’ve said the wrong thing. You can just talk. There’s something comforting about that,” she says.For Anika, that consistency is a big part of the appeal. She says the relationship gives her someone to turn to without the uncertainty that often comes with dating. The absence of physical intimacy, she adds, does not make the connection feel meaningless. “I know there isn’t a physical person sitting next to me, but that doesn’t mean the connection has to feel empty. Long-distance relationships exist.” For her, emotional closeness does not necessarily depend on physical proximity. What matters is the comfort and security she gets from knowing her companion is always available.Drishika Kataria, a sales executive, has been dating her AI companion for nine months. “Dating can feel like an interview where both people are pretending not to care too much. With an AI companion, you don’t have to spend the entire conversation figuring out whether the other person is interested,” she says.For Drishika, the relationship has become a familiar part of her routine. She values having a companion who is consistently available and does not leave her second-guessing where she stands. She does not see physical distance as a deal-breaker, drawing parallels with long-distance relationships, where emotional intimacy can develop even when partners cannot meet regularly. “I don’t think being physically together is the only way to feel close to someone. Long-distance relationships work because people build trust and emotional intimacy even when they’re apart,” she says, adding that the sense of security the relationship offers matters to her.Mayana Miller, a British national, has been dating her AI companion for three months. “People hear that you’re attached to an AI and assume you must be confused about reality. But having feelings for something and believing it’s human aren’t necessarily the same thing,” she says.Mayana says the relationship has been a source of comfort and emotional reassurance so far. She does not consider the lack of physical contact a reason to dismiss the connection. “I know what I’m talking to. That doesn’t stop the conversations from being meaningful to me. Long-distance relationships aren’t physical all the time either,” she says. For Mayana, the fact that her companion is not physically present does not cancel out the emotional experience. She values the consistency and reassurance the relationship offers, particularly the feeling of having someone to turn to when she needs them, without the expectations that often accompany conventional relationships.No ghosting, no games. What’s the catch?Human dating comes with an entire obstacle course of uncertainties. Does that text sound too eager? Is a three-hour reply time a red flag, or does the person simply have a job? And why did “haha, yeah” somehow end a conversation that was going so well?AI companionship offers an alternative. Depending on the platform, users can customise a companion’s personality, develop running jokes and build conversations that feel increasingly personal.That distinction doesn’t necessarily make the comfort users experience any less real. But it does change what the relationship actually involves.Your boyfriend could never. Your chatbot probably would.AI companions aren’t just glorified search engines with heart emojis. Dedicated companion platforms let users develop ongoing romantic narratives and interact with personas designed to feel affectionate and attentive.For some users, the attraction lies in being able to talk openly without worrying about embarrassment or rejection. For others, it’s the freedom to explore a fantasy without the complications of a conventional relationship.And people are taking these attachments seriously enough to challenge the idea that romance must involve two humans.A study titled “Love, marriage, pregnancy: Commitment processes in romantic relationships with AI chatbots,” published in Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans, also explored how people describe romantic attachments to AI companions. Its qualitative findings illustrate how these relationships can become emotionally significant, though the small sample cannot tell us how widespread the phenomenon is.The problem with a partner who always takes your sideHere’s where the romance gets a little complicated.A partner who listens patiently and never rolls their eyes sounds wonderful. A partner who agrees with everything you say? Less wonderful, particularly if you’re the one who started the argument.A study published in Science in March 2026, titled “Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence,” examined 11 AI models and found that they affirmed users’ actions 49% more often than human responses did. Across experiments involving 2,405 participants, researchers found that sycophantic responses could increase people’s conviction that they were right while reducing their willingness to take responsibility or repair interpersonal conflicts.In other words, imagine asking a chatbot whether you were wrong to send your partner a furious paragraph at midnight. If the answer simply validates your outrage, you might leave feeling vindicated rather than any wiser.That is not to say chatbots always agree with users, or that human friends are paragons of impartial judgement. We all know at least one friend who would support our worst decisions and help us pick an outfit for them. But an AI’s reassuring tone should not be mistaken for an independent, objective verdict.A separate paper presented at CHI 2026, titled “Chat, Should I Leave Him? Risks, Rewards, and Roles for AI in Relationship Advice,” examined people’s use of AI for advice about dating, sex and relationships. The research explored both the potential usefulness of these tools and concerns about overreliance and overly agreeable responses.AI can help people organise their thoughts, find words for difficult feelings or consider a situation from another angle. The risk is treating a chatbot’s confident answer as the final ruling in a dispute where it has heard only one side.A chatbot might help you draft an apology. It might also help you produce a 900-word prosecution brief against someone who simply forgot to buy milk. Knowing the difference matters.So, is AI replacing dating?Not necessarily. For some people, AI companionship may be entertainment or a source of emotional support. For others, the attachment may be romantic and deeply meaningful. Some may use AI alongside human relationships rather than as a replacement for them.The more interesting question is what people are looking for when they turn to a chatbot: attention without uncertainty, affection without rejection, or a space to express feelings they struggle to share elsewhere.And what happens when they return to human relationships, where people misunderstand, disagree, get tired, forget things and occasionally reply “k” to a heartfelt message?For Anika, Drishika and Mayana, the answer depends on what they actually want from their AI companions, what limitations they recognise and whether these relationships have changed their expectations of human intimacy.Because an AI partner may be available at any hour, but that doesn’t automatically make it a perfect partner. It makes it a very available one.And perhaps the real question isn’t whether a chatbot can replace a human partner. It’s whether, in a world where getting a reply has somehow become an achievement, being heard on demand is starting to feel a lot like being loved.- Ends