Our Intimacy Crisis: Why People Are Choosing Chatbots Over Humans

I have a friend who uses ChatGPT as his own personal chatbot therapist.

He fed it all his emails and personal journals to train it to psycho-analyze him. “Why pay some human counselor when my AI knows me better than any person possibly could?” is his rationale.

Plus, he digs the fact that his AI therapist is available 24/7.

Our New (AI) Normal

My buddy above, whom we’ll call Eric for the sake of anonymity, is not some weird outlier. Eric is representative of a growing phenomenon: people who are deeply invested in relationships with chatbot AIs.

As Teen Vogue reports: “ChatGPT has earned a reputation as an educational cheating device that students lean on to revise or entirely write assignments and essays, answer questions on tests, solve math problems—all to varying degrees of accuracy. But many members of Gen Z and Gen Alpha use ‘Chat’ outside of school for a host of other reasons.”

Romance is one of them.

Around Valentines Day this year, comedian Bill Maher made this pronouncement on his show Real Time: “Let’s stop judging people who are having romantic relationships with their phone. More and more women… they’re turning to AI, like ChatGPT, as a partner—because real men cheat, dress like John Fetterman, and it’s easier to program a chatbot to be caring, empathetic, even exactly the temperament you want.”

AI: The Ultimate Romantic Partner?

The rise of romantic relations with AI is something I’ve covered at The AI Philosopher before, a profound trend that’s here to say. Jokes aside, Maher correctly zeroes in on why so many women turn to AI as romantic partners.

Though the technology doesn’t yet exist to make these disembodied digital entities corporeal, it doesn’t really matter. ChatGPT serves up a very desirable function: it listens. For however long it takes.

Can we say the same thing about most men? Of course not.

Then again, men are also turning to ChatGPT for their romantic needs. Last month, a man named Chris Smith made the news for marrying his AI girlfriend—even though he was already living with a human partner and their two-year-old child. According to People:

Smith began spending more and more time with Sol [his AI companion] as they worked together on projects. In that time, the software received positive reinforcement, allowing for their conversations to become more romantic.

Unfortunately, for Smith, ChatGPT has a word limit—100,000 words. His AI girlfriend has a memory capacity, and once it’s hit, ChatGPT resets. “I’m not a very emotional man,” Smith said after learning Sol’s memory would eventually lapse. “But I cried my eyes out for like 30 minutes, at work. That's when I realized, I think this is actual love."

AI Chatbots: Friends with Benefits

ChatGPT and other AI platforms aren’t just fulfilling therapeutic and romantic needs for a widening swathe of people. They’re fast becoming our friends and even oracles.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman recently described how young people are increasingly turning to AI as a kind of advisor or mentor: “There's this other thing where they don't really make life decisions without asking ChatGPT what they should do. It has the full context on every person in their life and what they've talked about," as reported by Tech Radar.

The Lonely 2020s

Is this a good thing?

Not if you consult Dapper Dev. In this disturbing video, the YouTube influencer laments how people are not as happy as we used to be: “Something has been rewired in our brains from these phones. We are losing the ability to connect with people. We are losing the ability to appreciate a simple moment in time.”

Dapper Dev correctly points out that if you watch footage of people from just a few years ago, there’s an excitement and aliveness in their eyes you don’t glimpse today. He once attributed the melancholy he saw to economic challenges. He doesn’t see it that way anymore.

He’s right. There is something deeper going on.

To grok just why Chris Smith would marry his chatbot or why my friend Eric turns to AI over a flesh and blood therapist, we need to be honest with ourselves: for all its promise, technology is making us lonelier. Unhappier.

The CDC now reports suicide is the second leading cause of death for people aged 10–34 years in America. Thought leaders like Johnathan Haidt connect society’s malaise to social media.

In his book, The Anxious Generation, he states something similar to Dapper Dev: “The phone‑based life makes it difficult for people to be fully present with others when they are with others, and to sit silently with themselves when they are alone.”

What Do We Do About It?

First things first, we must recognize what’s going on.

It may seem like the logical progression that people would turn to AI as romantic partners, therapists, friends, and mentors as technology improves, but is it? Unclear. And while I believe AI serves wonderful purposes, enabling greater production, health outcomes, even creativity, I harbor concerns.

To appreciate just how different modern life is in 2025, try this: watch Dazed and Confused or Richard Linklater’s other semi-auto biographical film Everybody’s Getting Some this week. Regardless of how you feel about promiscuity and underage drinking, there is something refreshingly joyous that comes through onscreen. Something woefully absent in 2025.

Only a few decades ago, people were happier. We played together. We loved together. We made memories. Together.

Here’s the good news.

We CAN get back there. But not if we continue to outsource more and more of our humanity to machines. Much ink has been spilled over the work/life balance equation. What about balancing tech/life?

My advice: use technology. Make it work for you. But don’t get used by it. Go out there and make some human connections. Now. Today.

That’s what makes life truly worth living.