“AI girlfriend” applications are becoming increasingly popular worldwide

"AI girlfriend" applications are becoming increasingly popular worldwide, with more than 144,000 monthly searches for the term, according to Tools for Humans, a company that tracks popularity of AI tools and use cases. CEO Alec Chambers told Forbes that people, from teenagers to older men, are chatting with these AI girlfriends, with some using such tools as a replacement for relationships with human beings or deal with loneliness. 

"[The apps] are an infinite generator. People can spend endless amounts of time on it," Chambers said.

The internet is being flooded with hundreds of "AI girlfriend" chatbots and apps, including those from larger startups like Character AI. Many of these apps allow people to select and customize aspects like body type, ethnicity and personality traits of the character. Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are glutted with advertisement for explicit "AI girlfriend" apps, Wired reported in April. 

Sexual roleplay is also one of the most popular themes of conversations between bots and humans, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. More than 7% of the 200,000 conversations analyzed were about sex.

These chatbots could also pose a serious danger of alienating individuals and potentially making them addicted to the technology, Chambers said. While some AI girlfriend apps are free, others require people to pay to continue chatting with AI or access more features. "I think that's where it starts going into that really exploitative addictive area where users can lose track of time and also the expense really," he said drawing parallels to porn and gambling addiction. 

The risks of such technologies are further exacerbated by burgeoning male mental health and loneliness crisis, he said. 65% of men between the ages of 18 and 23 agreed with the statement "no one knows me well," according to a 2023 study by research and social justice organization Equimundo.