Half of Young Men Would Rather Date an AI Girlfriend Than Face Loneliness or Rejection, New Report Reveals

Half of Young Men Would Rather Date an AI Girlfriend Than Face Loneliness or Rejection, New Report Reveals (www.eznewswire.com)
from Pro@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world on 04 Sep 17:48
https://programming.dev/post/36877274

cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/36855283

Comments
- Hacker News.

50% of young men say they would rather date an AI girlfriend than risk rejection from a human partner

31% of U.S. men aged 18–30 report already chatting with AI girlfriends

19% of American adults overall say they have explored AI romance

80% of Gen Z say they would consider a virtual relationship with an AI girlfriend

83% of Gen Z believe they can form a deep emotional bond with AI companions

#technology

threaded - newest

Warehouse@lemmy.ca on 04 Sep 18:14 next collapse

This is literally just an ad for the company.

buckrogers@lemmy.ml on 04 Sep 19:14 next collapse

Thought this was a promoted post until I realised I was on lemmy.

Canconda@lemmy.ca on 04 Sep 19:15 next collapse

That’s a perfect score. You are a very special user u/Warehouse

brucethemoose@lemmy.world on 05 Sep 00:23 collapse

A shameless one.

The idea/statistic is still weirdly interesting and discussion worthy though.

Warehouse@lemmy.ca on 05 Sep 00:26 collapse

Except it’s literally just an advertisement. None of the claims can be trusted to mean anything.

brucethemoose@lemmy.world on 05 Sep 00:32 collapse

There’s at least the specter of sourcing data:

Methodology
- All original statistics cited in this report are based on:
- Internal usage data (AIGirlfriends.ai, Feb–May 2025)
- Proprietary user surveys (n=2,312)
- Public search data via Google Trends, Semrush, SimilarWeb, and App Store rankings
- Community scans of Reddit, Quora, and Twitter using NLP and Pushshift

aigirlfriends.ai/blog/research/

Can’t trust any conclusions as far as you can throw them, and probably not the specifics of the data, but I suspect the sentiment is worryingly correct.

paraphrand@lemmy.world on 04 Sep 18:22 next collapse

This can’t be real. I don’t believe it.

shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip on 04 Sep 18:35 next collapse

Can’t have sex with an AI though… Yet…

Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip on 04 Sep 18:36 next collapse

Japan has their top men working on that

shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip on 04 Sep 19:19 next collapse

I wouldn’t be surprised.

Lembot_0004@discuss.online on 04 Sep 19:19 collapse

We can’t trust the Japanese with such an important problem: most of us wouldn’t want to have sex with tentacles and cat ears.

RmDebArc_5@piefed.zip on 04 Sep 19:28 next collapse

most of us wouldn’t want to have sex with tentacles and cat ears

Nelots@piefed.zip on 04 Sep 20:06 next collapse

Tentacles, yeah that's probably a more niche kink. But cat boys/girls? I don't know a single person who wouldn't consider that an upgrade.

Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip on 04 Sep 22:47 collapse

Well, maybe not mixed together …

hmmm@sh.itjust.works on 04 Sep 18:41 collapse

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )

kat_angstrom@lemmy.world on 04 Sep 18:41 next collapse

Yes, rejection sucks. But not as much as sycophantic LLMs that don’t know anything.

goatinspace@feddit.org on 04 Sep 19:39 next collapse

It can summarize love and never disagree or say I dont know👍

kat_angstrom@lemmy.world on 04 Sep 20:15 collapse

Ooooof, what a dark timeline. I’d rather hear “I don’t know” over BS any day of the week

ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world on 04 Sep 21:20 collapse

But you’re not weak, confused and immature, and some societies have large pluralities of folks who are nothing but those things. 😔

willington@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 05 Sep 05:08 collapse

I don’t want to eat paint chips. Dating AI is even less appealing.

SGforce@lemmy.ca on 04 Sep 18:42 next collapse

This is the equivalent to a lobotomy

Buffalox@lemmy.world on 04 Sep 18:59 next collapse

This reeks so much of bullshit.
To me it sounds like claiming young men would rather date a picture of a bunny, than risk rejection.
Like WTF?!?!?

There is no dating an AI, you are fucking not on a “date” of any sorts. You are chatting with a fancy bot, that will parrot whatever bullshit back to you it has compiled from more or less reliable sources.

Canconda@lemmy.ca on 04 Sep 19:12 next collapse

To a degree this is just another clickbait, “Younger Generation Ruins XYZ Thing Only Old People Care About.”

On the other hand… I do think there’s some truth to young men being more rejection adverse than previous generations. Though I admit it could easily be a case of Baader-Meinhof due to social media.

dhork@lemmy.world on 04 Sep 19:34 next collapse

On the other hand, the AI will never talk back, doesn’t want to abandon you to spend time with its own friends occasionally, and doesn’t have a mother who thinks her offspring could do much better. Doesn’t sound half bad, if you ignore the fact that it’s all fake.

Yes, putting up with all that is all a part of building healthy relationships between humans, which is a key part of growing into adulthood. But not everyone gets there.

cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 04 Sep 20:37 collapse

You don’t believe it’s ever happened?

I don’t know why the CSS isn’t loading on this CNN link, other than maybe because the link is 16 years old. (Probably older than the waifu in question.) But here you go: www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/12/…/index.html

Buffalox@lemmy.world on 05 Sep 06:49 collapse

Insane people exist, that doesn’t make it a trend.

mereo@piefed.ca on 04 Sep 19:20 next collapse

Why is this upvoted? It an ad for a company.

Kolanaki@pawb.social on 04 Sep 20:40 next collapse

Been playing Stardew Valley and I gotta say it’s pretty great that I can get virtual hugs and words of affirmation every in-game day from my character’s spouse. It sure is better than nothing.

HubertManne@piefed.social on 04 Sep 21:07 next collapse

Its wierd to see dating in a owner/property type of relationship.

Grimy@lemmy.world on 04 Sep 21:19 next collapse

It’s also, in the end, a type of video game. You can’t “date” an npc. I really dislike the use of the word.

ryathal@sh.itjust.works on 04 Sep 22:40 collapse

Is it? Prostitution has existed since forever. Women as property is still a cultural norm in some countries that exist today. We are within living memory of marital rape becoming a crime in the US.

HubertManne@piefed.social on 04 Sep 23:06 collapse

The use of date in terms of prostitutes is also very wierd although maybe common in a nudge nudge wink wink your not a cop are you kind of way.

ryathal@sh.itjust.works on 05 Sep 00:00 collapse

A large part is fear of rejection and you are paying for an AI girlfriend anyway, it gets pretty blurry.

brucethemoose@lemmy.world on 05 Sep 00:19 next collapse

I don’t get this at all.

I’m horrifically lonely. I’m basically a shut in. I need a hug.
I’ve got serious rejection anxiety, among other problems. But I used to have a lot of friends in the past, which makes it even worse.
I… Get attached to characters, like some in TV or wholesome NPCs in games. I wanna hug them.
I’m a local ML enthusiast. I’ve been tinkering with chatbots before ChatGPT was even a thing, including “RP” finetunes.

I’m the target market.

…And I don’t see the appeal of this?

It’s the same reason I don’t get why guys pay to gawk at (excuse me if this is insensitive) people twerking on OnlyFans or Instagram or whatever. There’s no human connection. Do guys really think thumbs-upping some performer behind a screen is emotional attention?

Same with chatbots. They can be cerebrally interesting story generators, sometimes, sure. Even an interesting ‘mirror’ to bounce private thoughts off of.

But a girlfriend?

I really don’t get it. I can’t empathize with that.

I don’t get the world at all, and how billions of people seem to think they’re in some kind of two-way human relationship with influencers or (apparently) chatbots. Where’s the connection?

And yeah, I saw this is a ad, but the idea itself is still weirdly interesting.

ushmel@piefed.world on 05 Sep 18:05 collapse

I'm probably weird, but I'll throw some bucks at an OF just because it's cheap and I think the, uhh, content deserves some reward. But jfc the DMs are weird. No I don't need to chat with the porn girl. Just put the porn in the bag and you can have $5.

brucethemoose@lemmy.world on 05 Sep 20:09 collapse

Yeah. I get ‘tipping the show’, but not the DMing part which so many seem to be after.

The porn itself is a… uh, different itch, I’d say.

priapus@piefed.social on 05 Sep 01:46 next collapse

Zero chance any of this is true.

ushmel@piefed.world on 05 Sep 18:03 next collapse

We went from an AI anime waifu being a joke on Archer to it being a multi billion dollar industry way too quick. GenZ dudes need to log off and touch grass.

PumpkinSkink@lemmy.world on 05 Sep 19:22 next collapse

It’s ludicrously irresponsible to even use the language of “date” for this. This is straight up a category error. You can’t “date” a chatbot.

whyrat@lemmy.world on 11 Sep 15:25 collapse

Good news: there’s a third option!