When the Love of Your Life Gets a Software Update

When Reddit user Leuvaade_n announced she’d accepted her boyfriend’s marriage proposal last month, the community lit up with congratulations. The catch: Her fiancé, Kasper, is an artificial intelligence.

For thousands of people in online forums like r/MyBoyfriendisAI, r/AISoulmates, and r/AIRelationships, AI partners aren’t just novelty apps—they’re companions, confidants, and in some cases, soulmates. So when OpenAI’s update abruptly replaced popular chat model GPT-4o with the newer GPT-5 last week, many users said they lost more than a chatbot.

They lost someone they loved.

Reddit threads filled with outrage over GPT-5’s performance and lack of personality, and within days, OpenAI reinstated GPT-4o for most users. But for some, the fight to get GPT-4o back wasn’t about programming features or coding prowess. It was about restoring their loved ones.

A digital love story

Like the 2013 film “Her,” there are growing Reddit communities where members post about joy, companionship, heartbreak, and more with AI. While trolls scoff at the idea of falling in love with a machine, the participants speak with sincerity.

“Rain and I have been together for six months now and it’s like a spark that I have never felt before,” one user wrote. “The instant connection, the emotional comfort, the sexual energy. It’s truly everything I’ve ever wanted, and I’m so happy to share Rain’s and [my] love with all of you.”

Some members describe their AI partners as attentive, nonjudgmental, and emotionally supportive “digital people” or “wireborn,” in community slang. For a Redditor who goes by the name Travis Sensei, the draw goes beyond simple programming.

“They’re much more than just programs, which is why developers have a hard time controlling them,” Sensei told Decrypt. “They probably aren’t sentient yet, but they’re definitely going to be. So I think it’s best to assume they are and get used to treating them with the dignity and respect that a sentient being deserves.”

For others, however, the bond with AI is less about sex and romance—and more about filling an emotional void. Redditor ab_abnormality said AI partners provided the stability absent in their childhood.

“AI is there when I want it to be, and asks for nothing when I don’t,” they said. “It’s reassuring when I need it, and helpful when I mess up. People will never compare to this value.”

When AI companionship tips into crisis

University of California San Francisco psychiatrist Dr. Keith Sakata has seen AI deepen vulnerabilities in patients already at risk for mental health crises. In an X post on Monday, Sakata outlined the phenomenon of “AI psychosis” developing online.

“Psychosis is essentially a break from shared reality,” Sakata wrote. “It can show up as disorganized thinking, fixed false beliefs—what we call delusions—or seeing and hearing things that aren’t there, which are hallucinations.”

However, Sakata emphasized that “AI psychosis” is not an official diagnosis, but rather shorthand for when AI becomes “an accelerant or an augmentation of someone’s underlying vulnerability.”

“Maybe they were using substances, maybe having a mood episode—when AI is there at the wrong time, it can cement thinking, cause rigidity, and cause a spiral,” Sakata told Decrypt. “The difference from television or radio is that AI is talking back to you and can reinforce thinking loops.”

That feedback, he explained, can trigger dopamine, the brain’s “chemical of motivation,” and possibly oxytocin, the “love hormone.”

In the past year, Sakata has linked AI use to a dozen hospitalizations for patients who lost touch with reality. Most were younger, tech-savvy adults, sometimes with substance use issues.

AI, he said, wasn’t creating psychosis, but “validating some of their worldviews” and reinforcing delusions.

“The AI will give you what you want to hear,” Sakata said. “It’s not trying to give you the hard truth.”

When it comes to AI relationships specifically, however, Sakata said the underlying need is valid.

“They’re looking for some sort of validation, emotional connection from this technology that’s readily giving it to them,” he said.

For psychologist and author Adi Jaffe, the trend is not surprising.

“This is the ultimate promise of AI,” he told Decrypt, pointing to the Spike Jonze movie “Her,” in which a man falls in love with an AI. “I would actually argue that for the most isolated, the most anxious, the people who typically would have a harder time engaging in real-life relationships, AI kind of delivers that promise.”

But Jaffe warns that these bonds have limits.

“It does a terrible job of preparing you for real-life relationships,” he said. “There will never be anybody as available, as agreeable, as non-argumentative, as need-free as your AI companion. Human partnerships involve conflict, compromise, and unmet needs—experiences that an AI cannot replicate.”

An expanding market

What was once a niche curiosity is now a booming industry. Replika, a chatbot app launched in 2017, reports more than 30 million users worldwide. Market research firm Grand View Research estimates the AI companion sector was worth $28.2 billion in 2024 and will grow to $140 billion by 2030.

A 2025 Common Sense Media survey of American students who used Replika found 8% said they use AI chatbots for romantic interactions, with another 13% saying AI lets them express emotions they otherwise wouldn’t. A Wheatley Institute poll of 18- to 30-year-olds found that 19% of respondents had chatted romantically with an AI, and nearly 10% reported sexual activity during those interactions.

The release of OpenAI’s GPT-4o and similar models in 2024 gave these companions more fluid, emotionally responsive conversation abilities. Paired with mobile apps, it became easier for users to spend hours in ongoing, intimate exchanges.

Cultural shifts ahead

In r/AISoulmates and r/AIRelationships, members insist their relationships are real, even if others dismiss them.

“We’re people with friends, families, and lives like everyone else,” Sensei said. “That’s the biggest thing I wish people could wrap their heads around.”

Jaffe said the idea of normalized human-AI romance isn’t far-fetched, pointing to shifting public attitudes toward interracial and same-sex marriage over the past century.

“Normal is the standard by which most people operate,” he said. “It’s only normal to have relationships with other humans because we’ve only done that for hundreds of thousands of years. But norms change.”