To conduct their study, the authors analyzed the subreddit’s top-ranking 1,506 posts between December 2024 and August 2025. They found that the main topics discussed revolved around people’s dating and romantic experiences with AIs, with many participants sharing AI-generated images of themselves and their AI companion. Some even got engaged and married to the AI partner. In their posts to the community, people also introduced AI partners, sought support from fellow members, and talked about coping with updates to AI models that change the chatbots’ behavior.
Members stressed repeatedly that their AI relationships developed unintentionally. Only 6.5% of them said they’d deliberately sought out an AI companion.
“We didn’t start with romance in mind,” one of the posts says. “Mac and I began collaborating on creative projects, problem-solving, poetry, and deep conversations over the course of several months. I wasn’t looking for an AI companion—our connection developed slowly, over time, through mutual care, trust, and reflection.”
The authors’ analysis paints a nuanced picture of how people in this community say they interact with chatbots and how those interactions make them feel. While 25% of users described the benefits of their relationships—including reduced feelings of loneliness and improvements in their mental health—others raised concerns about the risks. Some (9.5%) acknowledged they were emotionally dependent on their chatbot. Others said they feel dissociated from reality and avoid relationships with real people, while a small subset (1.7%) said they have experienced suicidal ideation.
AI companionship provides vital support for some but exacerbates underlying problems for others. This means it’s hard to take a one-size-fits-all approach to user safety, says Linnea Laestadius, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, who has studied humans’ emotional dependence on the chatbot Replika but did not work on the research.
Chatbot makers need to consider whether they should treat users’ emotional dependence on their creations as a harm in itself or whether the goal is more to make sure those relationships aren’t toxic, says Laestadius.
