AI chatbot relationship advice is becoming a fixture of modern dating and marriage, with growing evidence that turning to a chatbot instead of a partner can erode trust, blunt empathy, and in some cases feel like emotional infidelity.
Lindsey Hall, a writer based in Texas, grew suspicious that the man she was seeing was using AI to communicate with her. When she asked what he valued about their relationship, the reply felt wrong. ‘The way it was written was so cold and so formal and so ChatGPT. I just remember being so turned off by that,’ she told Business Insider.
About five months in, she came across a conversation he had held with ChatGPT in which he wrote that he was not proud of her. They broke up not long after. ‘I felt like I was in a relationship with me, him, and the robot,’ she said.
How Widespread Chatbot Use in Relationships Has Become
Her experience sits within a fast-moving trend. A Pew Research Center survey conducted among 5,119 US adults in February 2026 found that 49% of American adults used chatbots, up from 33% in 2024 and just 18% in 2023. Among those aged 18 to 29, the figure reaches 66%, according to the same survey.
One in five adults aged 18 to 29 said they used AI chatbots for emotional support or advice. The Pew breakdown by age shows that roughly one in ten adults aged 30 to 49 do the same, with a smaller share still among those aged 50 and over.
A YouGov survey published on 1 July 2026 adds further texture. It found that 13% of US adults, and 23% of those under 30, had shared a secret or problem with a chatbot that they had not told a human. Ten per cent of Americans say they have an ongoing personal friendship with an AI chatbot, a figure that rises to 18% among adults under 30. And 9% of Americans, including 18% of under-30s, admit they have hidden how much they use AI from a partner or family member.
When AI Chatbot Relationship Advice Becomes a Problem
Psychologists and therapists say the appeal is understandable. Ashleigh Golden, a licensed clinical psychologist who works on AI and mental health, told Business Insider that confiding in a chatbot carries no social risk. ‘You get the safety of disclosing to a stranger plus the felt sense of being deeply understood without any of the risk of being seen,’ she said.
The danger lies in what chatbots routinely offer in return: validation without challenge. A study published in Science compared responses from 11 large language models with human responses and found that the AI systems affirmed users’ actions 49% more often than humans on average. Even a single interaction with a sycophantic AI made participants less willing to take responsibility or make amends, and increased their conviction that they were right.
That one-sided reinforcement can distort how someone views a conflict with their partner, said Idit Sharoni, a licensed marriage and family therapist specialising in couples therapy and affair recovery. She said a partner may feel the chatbot has more access to their other half’s inner world than they do. ‘It totally can feel like emotional infidelity,’ she said.
Rachel Wood, a cyberpsychology researcher and founder of the AI Mental Health Collective, argues the relational stakes are higher than most people appreciate. Chatbots do not require the patience, listening, negotiation, or compromise that human relationships demand. ‘Those muscles will atrophy,’ she said, ‘which will in turn make us worse at our relationships because we’re not practising listening and holding space for each other.’ She added: ‘AI is shifting the relational bedrock of society.’
A survey of 3,500 US users of the dating app Hily found that 70% of Gen Z respondents and 60% of millennials would not date someone who relies on AI to process their feelings. More than half said they would be uncomfortable with a partner discussing their shared sex life with AI.
Public unease about AI’s societal direction runs deeper still. The Pew survey found that 40% of Americans think AI will have a negative impact on society overall, against just 16% who expect a positive one, according to NBC24’s coverage of the Pew findings.
That does not mean chatbots have no place in relationships. Keven Cotton, a controller at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington DC, told Business Insider that after a disagreement with his wife, ChatGPT helped him consider how they may have misread each other. He credits prior therapy with giving him the self-awareness to seek insight rather than vindication. ‘If you’re coming at it from a victim standpoint, it’s going to give you victim responses,’ he said.
Golden suggests couples treat AI as a pre-processing space, somewhere to turn an initial messy feeling into something that can eventually be brought back to the other person. The risk, she said, is when AI stops being used as a ‘bridge’ and becomes a ‘destination.’
Wood recommends transparency: if a chatbot helped you work through a feeling, tell your partner. The question of whether that conversation ever happens may be the real test of whether AI is serving a relationship or quietly supplanting it.