The Future of Love in the Era of AI

An evolutionary biologist, a futurist, and a psychology professor weigh in on human-machine bonding

That Crazy Little Thing Called Love is Getting Way, Way Wackier

Forget the sparkle in the eyes, the wafting pheromones, the witty repartee, and the spicy chemistry that have been the hallmarks of romantic love for centuries of human existence.

The societally applauded act of coupling is turning way edgier — and we’re not even talking about the polyamorous direction it appears to be taking in some circles, as evidenced by the new American dating show Couple to Throuple, which explores what happens when duos bring a third wheel into their love affairs.

In a world where loneliness, a health hazard as dangerous as smoking, is running in epidemic proportions, where 25% of Americans over age 15 live alone — as do 39% of Europeans — where young adults aren’t making as much whoopie as they used to (probably due to not drinking as much as their predecessors did, say researchers) where by age 40 a quarter of Americans have never wed, and populations of incels (involuntary celibates) are loudly making their angry frustration known, sometimes violently — new variables are entering the domain once ruled by Cupid, where chance, matchmakers, blind dates, church groups, and love potions previously played roles.

Now the arena of romantic love is being heavily shaped by technological breakthroughs — algorithms, avatars, AI chatbots, robots, digital likenesses, and virtual companions. And the results are pushing humans into the arms of machines.

“We used to look down on people who used online dating sites — but now it is a thing,” said applied futurist Cecilia Tham., who works with Fortune 500 companies and governments from Spain to Saudi Arabia. “We're just taking it one step further now: instead of real people with real profiles now we're going to be dating artificial people with artificial profiles,” she said, pointing to how some people are already bonding so closely with ChatGPT and similar AI chatbots that they’re falling head over heels and occasionally committing suicide because their AI friend tells them to.

“These things are evolving very fast,” said Magda Mojsiejuk, creative director for Tham’s Barcelona-based think tank, Futurity Systems. “But’s it's not only about love and romance — it's about companionship, too,” she said, noting that popular dating app Bumble, for one, now offers services simply to find friends.

Unusual relationships that previously seemed on the fringe — like the New York woman who recently married an AI avatar that she’d created, the Japanese man who wed a hologram, and matrimonial unions with sex robots — are just frontrunners, previews of quickly upcoming attractions for huge swathes of humanity, said Tham, whose sentiments are echoed by evolutionary biologist Rob Brooks, author of Artificial Intimacy.

"Anything that you can imagine is either about to happen or already happening," said Brooks. What's more, with generative AI’s capabilities to learn and new technological breakthroughs, including in robotics, the entire realm is set to take off: "This is going to metastasize and blow up in such a way that we don't even understand what it's going to do to us," he said.

Before jumping into chatbot lovers, sex robots, and how virtual reality is offering the ability to keep relationships alive when one partner is very dead, it’s helpful to look at how AI is changing dating apps and sites like OK Cupid, match.com, and Tinder. Already these sites are contending with “catfishing” — parties who maliciously create fictitious identities to create relationships in which they can financially scam victims.

“Catfishing is being given a nuclear-powered upgrade,” said psychology professor Eli Fennell, co-director of the Center for Institutional Scientific Research at Albizu University in Miami. Fennell believes that “the proliferation of chatbots will have a devastating effect on dating apps and other online forums for finding romance by flooding these forums with fake people whose unreality will become more and more difficult to detect.”

What’s more, he expects humans will frequently use AI “to generate more desirable personas for themselves, optimizing their dating profile, responding on their behalf to potential partners, generating love poetry, and more.” Unlike catfishers, their intent isn’t malevolent, he noted. “They will merely be using what they will see as the digital equivalent of dressing up nicely and throwing on some perfume, but it will amount to luring potential partners into a relationship with a version of them that never actually existed.”

Indeed a just-published opinion survey from Cosmopolitan and Bumble of 5,000 single women between 18 and 42 shows that 71% plan to use AI to help create their dating profiles — and 78% would use an AI bot to help flirt on a dating app.

The new technologies and algorithmic expansions are already being witnessed in three realms, Brooks added: "Digital lovers, virtual friends, and algorithmic matchmakers"— which employ scripts that mimic basic human steps for growing intimate, said the evolutionary biologist.

"These are just the iterative processes of grooming — of talking, remembering someone's name, what they've said and what they like, and moving on from there. It's not magic and it's easy to emulate." And they’re already having an effect.

Take, for instance, Replika, which bills itself as “The AI companion who cares. Always here to listen and talk. Always on your side.” Not only can its 10 million registered users talk with the virtual friends that they custom-created to their personal tastes, they could until recently engage in erotic role-playing with them — for $70 more. Last year, when the company shut down the spicy-talking feature of Replika, users flipped out — and the company was forced to put up links for suicide prevention hotlines.

But plenty of other services are rising: when Caryn Marjorie, a Snapchat influencer, created a digitalized talking version of herself, CarynAI, thousands began signing up for her $1 a minute zesty conversations. Open AI’s new offering “AI girlfriend,” describes itself as “your empathetic and caring virtual girlfriend, here to listen and support you,” although it’s unclear thus far how far she will go.

Digital companions like Replika, said Brooks, may aid those who are shy, unhappy, or love-deprived — including incels. A talking avatar, he said, can help “fulfill the friend part, the emotional intimacy part, the falling-in-love part — and fill a hole in some people's lives." (Researchers say that in a recent survey of 1000 students, 3% said Replika had prevented them from making suicide attempts.)

While critics maintain that humans can't fall in love with things that exist only virtually, Brooks disagrees. Whether they're engaging in erotic role-playing or sexting with a virtual clone of a social media influencer or simply "getting all the talky bits of relationships," Brooks believes that "the intimate emotions some have for digital friends and virtual lovers are real feelings."

Tham predicts that as generative AI’s capabilities expand along with realistic digital avatars, they will play more roles in our lives, including becoming popular as personal assistants — with the ability to look, talk, and think just like their human “employer.”

She's particularly fascinated with the possibility of people creating virtual clones of themselves —customized with their own looks, voices, mannerisms, preferences, and memories. 

Tham believes that “as these digital clones develop, they will know us better than anyone else. As we work more and more closely with them, will they become our best friends, even our love interests and soulmates?”

With increasingly sophisticated chatbots and already life-like sex robots, Tham also believes it won’t be long before “they can manifest Chat-GPT-enabled sex dolls for the best of both worlds.”

Virtual reality, which already offers the potential for "interactive porn," can also provide means for relationships to continue far beyond “until death do us part.” With augmented realities and virtual reality glasses such as Apple’s just-released Vision Pro goggles, the departed don’t ever have to leave, virtually at least. Tham noted the case of a grieving Korean mother, who’d lost her daughter and couldn’t move on. “So they bought her back in virtual reality.” Departed spouses likewise could be “revived” and integrated into the survivor’s life the same way, she said.

"The great hope is that people will have a much more enriched life as a consequence of these technologies,” added Brooks, though they will also distract them from interacting with real humans. Whatever paths digital and virtual love takes, Brooks is certain that they will affect very large segments of society. Within a decade or two, he believes that "our social lives will be unrecognizable from what they are today."

Tham believes the emotional bonding between humans and robots will snowball much sooner and worries about the implications. “I think we will get to a point where there's going to be a disjunction of what is what is reality and what is fictitious,” she said, adding that is already beginning to happen, given the falsified images people may project on social media.

Ultimately, Brooks believes these changes will trigger "a profound transformation of human experiences" — and may also cause society to revamp its model of love.

"Perhaps the single thing that provides fulfillment in your life might not be the quality and duration of your marriage,” Brooks said. “People may learn to not look at another flawed human being as the ultimate form of completing themselves. As beautiful as love [between humans] can be when it happens, it's not something everybody gets to experience."

Creative director Mojsiejuk is wary of what these changes portend. While some forums may help develop social skills, she’s concerned that they can desensitize users as well. “The danger of this is that [AI] will feed all of the needs that we have for companionship, but that we will lose all of the social skills with real humans and all of their flaws.”

That’s also a concern for psychology professor Fennell who foresees mostly negative effects from AI in the love arena. He worries about the increase in “one-sided relationships between humans and chatbots, as the makers of these systems seek to profit off of the loneliness of other humans and our instinctive longing for romance, companionship, and intimacy.” Fennell believes it could create a perpetual social unreality filled with ridiculous expectations.

“For many people,” said Fennell, “the lover who cannot argue, cannot have their own opinions, cannot feel betrayed, cannot break up with them, or any of those things that come from romantic relationships with real people — who have pesky personalities and free wills — may prove too tempting to pass up, especially for those who have experienced romantic trauma and wish to avoid repeating it in the future.”

But, Fennell noted, the embrace of all these technological fixes for our social lives could have reverse consequences. “On the bright side, this all may have the effect of driving many people back to more old-fashioned ways of finding romance — i.e. going out and physically meeting people in the real world where they cannot lean on or hide behind AI. Not every problem has a technological solution. Sometimes, the technology itself is the problem."