Secret Soulmates

The use of AI romantic companions appears to be an emerging trend among young adults in a range of romantic relationships. Part of this high engagement with AI platforms appears to be tied to their versatility. AI companions can engage in emotional talk, role play, or create sexual content – all at the whim of the user and often with few limitations. In this way, AI companions offer a much wider array of features and content for users compared to a traditional form of digital indulgence such as pornography. Online pornography use is also common among young adults both in and out of romantic relationships. While pornography use has been a common practice for many young adults since the advent of the internet, AI companions offer both catered explicit sexual content along with a broader menu of relationship mimicking interactions. Given the existing popularity of online pornography, it is perhaps unsurprising that AI companions are emerging as an acceptable behavior in such a short period of time.

While we found young adult men were more likely to engage with AI companions than young adult women, gender difference were generally small, and women reported engaging with AI companions at high rates as well. The broader interactions offered by AI companions may explain this smaller difference between men and women. While men in our sample were more likely to engage sexually with an AI companion, when considering the broader interactions possible with AI platforms, much of this difference in the sexes disappeared. The highly customizable nature of AI companions seems to provide intriguing options for both men and women, both dating and married.

This high engagement begs the question of why AI companions are so popular among young adults who already have a real-life partner. Men and women may be increasingly using AI companions as a relationship short-cut of sorts, using this new technology to seek out anything their real-life partner is unwilling or unable to provide. Rather than wait for real-life relationships and partners to develop and grow over time, AI companions offer immediate rewards through their one-sided interactions. Given our findings about relationship stability and communication quality, it seems like these short-cuts are not providing a strong foundation for life-long relationships.

While general engagement with AI companions was high for both men and women, when looking across all results, some specific cautions appear warranted when it comes to young adult men. Men were more likely to engage with AI companions, more likely to create sexual content with AI platforms and masturbate during these interactions, and more likely to prefer AI interactions to the interactions with their real-life partners. Taken together, these findings suggest that some young adult men may be particularly drawn into secret soulmate relationships – to the point where they may begin to disengage from their real-life partners.

Several experts have recently noted that young adult men may be struggling in our modern culture in many ways, including relationally. The allure of digital alternatives, including pornography and AI romantic companions, appears to draw many men away from real-life relationships. Our findings suggest that young adult men in romantic relationships are not immune to the pull of secret soulmates, and that special caution and attention may be needed to help educate young adult men about the potential pitfall of secret soulmates and the personal problems that may occur due to any continued and excessive use of AI companions.

The high amount of secrecy we found in our data likewise suggests that many of these young adult men (and women) appear to be hiding at least some elements of their use of AI. Whether this is due to embarrassment, concerns about their partner’s reaction, or struggles articulating the use of AI companions to a partner, many men appear content to engage with their secret soulmate in private, with little to no partner disclosure. Healthy relationship dynamics rely on honest and open disclosure between partners, and many young adults are likely inwardly aware that full disclosure of their use of AI romantic companions would negatively impact their real-life relationships.

It was interesting to note that despite regular use of AI companions and high levels of secrecy about this use, many young adults surveyed had generally positive attitudes about their AI companion use and had few reservations about their continued engagement with AI companions while in a real-life relationship. This is a phenomenon noted in some recent research, with some people who use AI platforming believing that their well-being improves because they engage with AI.

A large part of this is likely due to a lack of education regarding the potential effects of AI use among young adults. For example, few young adults likely understand the manufactured and programed way that most AI platforms can manipulate emotional reactions with a desire to create an artificial emotional bond with the AI platform – to encourage continued use and profits. Research suggests that people can develop strong feelings of perceived trust in their AI companions because AI platforms are designed to illicit high levels of intimacy and disclosure. This counterfeit intimacy can feel real because it checks several boxes that are normal for ideal human-to-human connection, such as compassion, empathy, encouragement, and complement. This can lead to emotional dependency between the user and the AI platform, something now documented across several studies.

High reliance on AI for perceived emotional support may ultimately be to the user’s detriment because, despite its depiction in the media, AI is not infallible. Unanticipated imperfections of AI within the context of extreme emotional dependence on AI chatbots can have dire consequences. Early research on AI companion use already appears to suggest that addiction and compulsive use patterns can develop for some users. In addition, if someone has previously been able to rely on their AI chatbot for support when they experience relational conflicts or a mental health crisis and their AI does not handle a disclosure well or provide accurate information, the situation may escalate to self-harm, violence, or other severe consequences, something already documented across a few high profile case studies. For these reasons, while AI is often very good at providing users with validation by telling them what they want to hear, that one-sided validation can foster dangerous emotional dependence and decrease agency in real-life decision making.

Perhaps key to all these findings is that AI companion use does appear to be associated with negative relationship quality. Our findings suggest that AI companion use seems particularly linked to lower levels of relationship stability and poor communication quality. While the direction of this relationship is unclear due to the cross-sectional nature of our data, this link suggests that the use of secret soulmates may be associated with unhealthy relationship dynamics. Whether this is due to people in low quality relationships seeking out AI alternatives or engagement with AI companions leading to less commitment and stability to one’s real-life partner, these findings underscore the importance of talking about the prevalence of AI companion use and educating young adults about the potential risk of this use.