Mom, Meet My New AI Girlfriend – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

I suppose we should have seen it coming. After all, it was pretty predictable, given trends such as the explosion and heightened usability of AI applications; rising levels of loneliness, including over 60 percent of young adults experiencing “serious loneliness”; the decline in dating and interest in romance and marriage among young men and women; plummeting marriage rates; an increased delay of marriage until later in life; and the increasing decline in sexual activity among younger Americans.

What should have been so easy to anticipate, based on these trends? The rise of AI romance. Dating and romance with, yes, fictional men and women tailor-made for you by AI apps. (RELATED: Gen Z is Replacing Valentine’s With Palentine’s Day)

As covered in a recent article by Brian Willoughby and Jason Carroll for the Institute for Family Studies, founded on a Wheatley Institute study that they helped co-author based on a survey of 2,969 adults, there has been a sharp increase in the use of “AI romantic companion apps that simulate romantic and sexual partners.” (Their research and article also looked at the use of social media to display “idealized and sexualized images of women and men” and the use of AI-generated porn. But here, I will focus on the use of AI to replace flesh-and-blood dating and romance.) (RELATED: Making Friends: AI and Companionship)

The authors report that AI apps to simulate romantic partners typically use generative AI to mimic “impromptu” human conversations. The fiction evolves the longer the user engages with it, tailoring itself to the desires of the human. They are designed to be “emotionally validating, caring, and always interested in” their human lovers, not to mention sexually available. They can be programmed to have ideal looks and personalities. Or they can be tailored to have cartoonish, such as anime, physical appearances. Imagine — the perfect romantic partner with no compromises, conflicts, clashes of personality, or possibility of rejection.

In other words, none of those relational realities help us cope with reality and grow into more mature human beings. You want a Stepford wife or the perfect “handmaid”? How about a career-driven naughty boy with feminist sensibilities? You can have it.

Let’s look at some of the statistics reported by Willoughby and Carroll: About one in five American adults has at least interacted with and generated a “romantic partner” with AI apps. This includes nearly one in three young males and one in four young females (and roughly half as many older adults). “Fourteen percent of young adult men, and five percent of adult men” reported sexual relationships with their AI romantic partners, compared to “seven percent of young adult women and three percent of adult women.”

More than one in five preferred AI romantic partners to real human ones. Forty-two percent found AI easier to talk to than humans, close to the same percent thought AI listened better, and almost a third said AI understood them better. In real human relationships, we develop these positive relational qualities with time and grow personally through the act of achieving them with fellow Homo sapiens. (RELATED: Marriage Is the Antidote to Societal Decay)

About a third chatted with AI partners for the purposes of sexual arousal. Sixteen percent did so weekly. Is this going to eventually replace paying for phone sex?

Despite the glowing reviews of so many folks claiming the superiority of AI romance, it appears that forsaking warm, embodied partners for cold computer screens is not the best prescription for mental health. Humans need real human connections, including deep, committed personal ones we can experience with our five senses, which AI can never provide (no, not even with robots).

As the authors note, “similar to pornography, these apps offer a momentary escape from emotional struggles but then leave the user feeling increased isolation — thus creating a familiar negative cycle that damages mental health and real relationship bonds.” Over half of men who use AI for romance were at “risk for depression” using the “Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D).”

Just as many experienced high levels of loneliness. It was about as bad or worse for women, whose comparable percentages are 60 and 52 percent, respectively. Both males and females had significantly higher rates of these problems than those surveyed who did not engage in AI romance.

Are these heightened levels of isolation and loneliness effects or causes of turning away from human connectedness to AI love? My guess is both. Either way, this escape from relational reality isn’t helping these people.

It is common to hear concerns over the ubiquitous use and growing sophistication of AI — as it replaces humans in often destructive ways that make us less smart and more isolated — be treated as Luddite thinking by AI’s champions. Yet this is an extension of what we already know about the unintended consequences of social media and 24/7 universal access to Internet porn. The use of AI to replace human romance is a particularly disturbing development in our march away from reality and true human connectedness.

It appears we probably won’t succeed in putting this counterfeit romance genie back in the bottle. Yet this should not stop us from constantly celebrating the value of human relationships, including romantic ones, and the value of the hard work necessary to make these relationships work, even when we experience disappointment along the way. These things are, after all, the stuff of being human and of growing and maturing over time.

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