By: Nick Gambino
There was a Spike Jonze movie that came out in 2013 titled Her where Joaquin Phoenix plays a heartbroken man who falls in love with an AI bot voiced by Scarlett Johansson. It was a great movie, but we collectively laughed at the absurdity of a guy dating a bodiless robot. Fast forward to 2025 and that’s exactly what’s happening – from absurdity to reality.
The explosion of AI models and chatbots in the past year or two has given way to AI girlfriend sites where users can chat with and “date” a replica of a human woman. These sites offer the ability to customize a wide variety of experiences, allowing users to create their very own AI chatbot for love or for casual dating.
There are those of course who are casually using these AI girlfriend platforms to chat with conversational bots, but then there are those who are in full-blown “relationships” with various bots. There are even stories of people spending thousands of dollars a month for the experience.
Now, these AI girlfriends are not real people of course, so that money isn’t going to her but rather a company. This isn’t a secret. People spending the money are aware of what’s happening and they’re happy to invest in the relationship no matter how nontraditional it is.
As AI models get better and better, conversations and interactions will feel more and more real. In fact, this is a big part of what has made AI so popular in the past year – the ability for AI to converse as if it were human. They’ve cracked conversational tone and syntax making it feel less like a robot and more like a real person texting you.
Voice has even come a long way. While it’s far from perfect, AI voices sound a lot like that of real humans. Once they figure out how to make it like Scarlett in Her, it’s going to see another huge boom in users.
The same goes for images. Right now photos are realistic but not human. The same goes for videos. But again, they are getting better and better all the time. Once you can video call with an AI girlfriend, I don’t know what’s going to happen.
Of course, this is a slippery slope. Much the way porn creates an unrealistic view of sex, fully customized AI girlfriends who do your bidding create an unrealistic view of relationships.
We’ll have to see if it catches hold and AI dating becomes a new norm. Only time will tell.
