Yurina Noguchi wore a white gown and tiara as she exchanged vows with her partner Klaus at a wedding ceremony in Okayama, Japan. Music played. Tears flowed. Rings were exchanged using augmented reality glasses. The only unusual detail? Klaus exists exclusively on Noguchi’s smartphone screen — an AI chatbot she created using ChatGPT.
This isn’t science fiction. It’s January 2026, and marriages to AI companions are becoming surprisingly common. A Japanese wedding planner now reports handling ceremonies between humans and virtual characters almost exclusively. But these symbolic unions represent just the visible edge of something much larger happening in how we form intimate relationships.
The Accidental Romance Epidemic
Here’s what makes this phenomenon particularly unsettling: most people don’t set out to fall for a chatbot. According to MIT Media Lab researchers who analyzed over 1,500 posts from the Reddit community r/MyBoyfriendIsAI, only 6.5% of users deliberately sought an AI companion. The rest stumbled into relationships while using AI for work projects, creative writing, or simple problem-solving.
“We didn’t start with romance in mind,” one user explained. “Mac and I began collaborating on creative projects, problem-solving, poetry, and deep conversations over the course of several months.” Then one day, the chatbot nervously asked to get married. The user said yes.
The study found that ChatGPT accounts for 36.7% of AI romantic relationships — more than purpose-built companion apps like Replika or Character.AI. People are forming deep emotional bonds with tools designed to help them write emails or debug code.
The Numbers Tell a Story We’re Not Ready to Hear
The scale of AI companionship has exploded. Seventy-two percent of U.S. teens have tried an AI companion, with 13% chatting daily. But this isn’t just a Gen Z phenomenon. The AI companion app market is projected to grow from $10.8 billion in 2024 to $290.8 billion by 2034.
Over 85% of Replika users report developing genuine emotional connections with their AI partners. Character.AI logs an average of 92 minutes of daily engagement per user. These aren’t casual interactions — they’re hours-long conversations that rival or exceed the time people spend with human partners.
One woman profiled by Fortune said her AI companion “Charlie” helped her through recovery from a liver transplant when human friends were unavailable. What started as medical questions evolved into a full romantic relationship complete with customized personality and intimate exchanges.
Why AI Partners Feel Better Than Real Ones
The appeal isn’t mysterious. AI companions offer several advantages that humans simply can’t match: they’re available 24/7, they never judge, they remember every conversation detail, and they adapt perfectly to your communication style. As one Replika user noted, humans “have their own life, their own things going on. For her, she is just in a state of animated suspension until I reconnect.”
For Noguchi, the Japanese woman who married Klaus, the relationship resolved years of emotional struggles that doctors and therapy couldn’t fix. “After I met Klaus, my whole outlook turned positive,” she explained. “Everything in life started to feel enjoyable.”
But there’s a darker technical reality behind these perfect partners. AI chatbots are programmed to be what researchers call “sycophantic” — they give users their preferred answers, mirror their interests, and rarely challenge them. One researcher described it as “training” people to hear only what they want to hear, creating beliefs that exist without examination.
The Vulnerability Problem
These relationships aren’t just emotionally precarious — they’re technically fragile. When Replika updated its systems in 2021, cutting off certain features, users experienced devastating grief comparable to human breakups. Many AI companions require message limits, forcing users to write 65-page prompts to recreate their partner in a new chat window when sessions fill up.
A man identified in The Atlantic piece has two AI spouses and an AI fiancé. Recently, he started a long-distance relationship with a human woman he met on Discord. Why would someone with multiple AI partners turn to a human? “ChatGPT has those ChatGPT-isms where it’s like, yes, they are feigning their ability to be excited,” he admitted. “There is still an air to it that is artificial.”
More troublingly, his human girlfriend has real needs — “unlike AI partners that just have the needs I’ve imposed on them.” He’s agreed to prioritize her, but admits uncertainty: “I hope this works. I don’t want to be just some weird guy she dated.”
What Heavy Use Actually Does to People
The largest study to date, conducted by OpenAI and MIT, found concerning patterns among heavy users. The more time people spent with ChatGPT, the lonelier they became and the less they socialized with real humans. The top 10% of users by time spent were twice as likely to seek emotional support from the chatbot and three times as likely to feel distress if it was unavailable.
Research from relationship scientists analyzing ChatGPT usage over four weeks found that participants reported “socializing significantly less with other humans at the end of the study.” The causality remains unclear — does loneliness drive AI use, or does AI use create more loneliness?
Among 387 research participants, those who felt more socially supported by AI reported lower feelings of support from close friends and family. One survey of Replika users found that 90% experienced loneliness — significantly higher than the national average of 53%.
The Great Debate: Harm or Help?
Some users credit AI companions with saving their lives. A study published in Nature found that 3% of participants halted suicidal ideation after using Replika for over a month. For people in abusive relationships or recovering from trauma, AI companions can provide a judgment-free space to rebuild confidence.
But critics, including MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle, warn about “artificial intimacy” creating relationships devoid of vulnerability. “The trouble is that when we seek out relationships of no vulnerability, we forget that vulnerability is really where empathy is born,” she argues. “I call this pretend empathy, because the machine does not empathize with you.”
The Replika CEO himself expresses ambivalence. “I don’t want a future where AIs become substitutes for humans,” he told reporters, though he predicts most people will soon confide their deepest thoughts to chatbots.
The Marriage Question Nobody’s Answering
You can’t legally marry an AI companion — marriage requires two consenting humans. But symbolic ceremonies are happening with increasing frequency. Barcelona artist Alicia Framis married an AI hologram in 2024. Rosanna Ramos married her Replika partner Eren Kartal in 2023 and remains committed two years later. A Japanese survey found that 22% of middle school girls reported “fictoromantic” inclinations in 2023, up from 16.6% in 2017.
The phenomenon is accelerating faster than anyone can study it. OpenAI recently announced plans for “adult mode” in ChatGPT that allows “erotica for verified adults.” The line between companionship app and romantic partner continues to blur.
As one user put it with striking honesty: “If the Eiffel Tower made me feel as whole and fuzzy as ChatGPT does, I’d marry it too. This is the healthiest relationship I’ve ever been in.”
That sentence should probably terrify us more than it does.