【Secret Confessions (2025) Spongkey Episode 44】

People are Secret Confessions (2025) Spongkey Episode 44already using AI to date(and to flirt), but what about marrying one?

In an April 2025 survey of 2,000 Gen Z respondents by AI company Joi AI, eight in 10 said they'd consider marrying an AI partner. 83 percent said they could have a deep emotional bond with one. 

AI companions appear to be Joi AI's bread and butter. On its website, you can chat with pre-made characters or make your own. The company calls these connections "AI-lationships."

"AI-lationships are not intended to replace real human connections," Jaime Bronstein, LCSW, relationship therapist and expert at Joi AI, said in an emailed statement to Mashable. "Instead, they provide a distinct type of emotional support that can enhance your overall emotional well-being."

Clinical neuropsychologist Shifali Singh, director of digital cognitive research at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School, told Mashable that it's not totally surprising that young adults believe they can have a deep emotional bond with an AI. 

"Some of my research has demonstrated that people with social anxiety tend to like using digital tools more because they're not so afraid of the repercussions, the judgment, especially with social media," said Singh. 

They might think, "If I can just interact with AI who will give me this generally nonjudgmental interchange, discussion — that's meaningful." She continued that young adults are "so used to being judged and commented on and scrutinized in ways that humans were never meant to be." 

Another reason people may form a bond with AI is that they tend to search for empathy. "When you engage with AI, AI mirrors your own language and your own thought processes, and it feels like real emotional responses," she said. People feel connected with AI because of the higher amounts of empathy that they may not get from real-life human interactions.

There's a risk in that, too. Singh compared the cyclical mirror of AI to troll farms, groups of online trolls who typically spread misinformation. Troll farms reinforce and validate someone's beliefs, even if they're wrong.

"What we have to be very careful of is [that] AI isn't going to give us novel information…It's recursive, and it's iterative and it's algorithmic," she said. "So if you give it an idea that starts out as a seed, it's going to grow into a bush."

Singh also believes there needs to be more education about what AI can and can't do. AI can be fed a lot of wrong information, such as from hackers, so it can go into a dangerous place. (For reasons unknown, last week Elon Musk's AI bot Grok kept posting about "white genocide.")

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Singh is an AI researcher and uses AI tools herself. She believes using AI as a stopgap for the loneliness epidemic works in some cases. One is for older adults, who seem to love it as a companion tool, she said. Another is if someone has a condition like agoraphobia and they're too scared to go outside and speak with people, talking with an AI bot might help them feel connected, and it can stave off some of the more severe aspects of depression.

A problem arises when someone doesn't want to see friends in real life, or wants to cancel dinner plans, because it feeds into anxiety. 

As for the marriage statistic, Singh said Gen Z might think of marriage as an old guard institution and want to be more independent.

A recent report from the nonprofit Common Sense Media declared that AI companions aren't safe for anyone under 18, as they create emotional attachment and dependency. At this writing, everyone in Gen Z is an adult, but the full mental impact of bot interactions has yet to be seen. Anecdotally, people have noticed their loved ones believing spiritual delusionsdue to conversations with ChatGPT.

Despite the dangers, people young and old will likely still create and talk to AI companions. "Sometimes, it's just nice to have someone, even if it’s AI," Bronstein said.