Does everyone really go out with AI chatbots?

Among the ways in which companies of artificial intelligence have tried to bring people to engage with their products, perhaps the coarse is to tackle solitude. When a friend, a portable AI pendant marketed as a portable “companion”, plastered his advertisements in the New York metro, they were (rightly) degraded. And yet, a new investigation suggests that behind closed doors, more people you might expect from having romantic and sexual relationships with AI chatbots.

Vantage Point, a Texas based consulting service that offers relationships related to relationships, questioned 1,012 adults and says that almost 30% of them said they had at least one romantic relationship with an AI companion. It seems … high, right? Perhaps the hope of thinking that it simply cannot be so high, but let’s continue to be full of hope.

It should be noted that this is the first research element that Vantage Point published, and it attracts attention. The company used Surveymonkey to lead it, according to its methodology, it is therefore preferable to consider it as informal survey that a scientific study. And there is no reason to think that there is a wickedness behind the data. It’s just a reference point. Fortunately, we have some references with which we can cross it.

For example, Match.com and the Kinsey Institute of the University of Indiana have published data that showed that 16% of adults have interacted with AI as a romantic companion. All this is self -deprecated by people who respond to the investigation, so how they differentiate a “romantic relationship”, because the point of view brings him together, compared to the match / kinsey adhesion of a romantic “interaction” is entirely in the eye of the individual. In fact, Vantage Point included a quote from a respondent who said they “had sexual discussions” but “do not see him as a relationship”.

Generally, however, we would imagine that an interaction is less a prolonged situation than a relationship, and Match / Kinsey has found half of many people with interactions that the point of view has found people with relationships.

Now, if you ask the younger generations, these figures are close to the global Vantage Point figures. By match / Kinsey, 23% of millennials and 33% of the ZERS generation said they had romantic interactions with AI. Vantage Point has not broken down their data on age relationships, but the data may be biased. However, once again, it depends largely on who you ask. A survey in family studies / Yougov with 2,000 adults under the age of 40 revealed that only 1% of young Americans claim to have an AI companion, and 7% are open to the idea of ​​a romantic partnership with AI.

Vantage Point noted that young people were much more likely to consider “date” an AI chatbot while also being related to a human to cheat, 66% calling it a form of infidelity (although 10% of this 66% said it was an acceptable cheating). It is roughly in accordance with the results of another Kinsey study, this time with dangadvice.com, which revealed that 61% of all adults believe that sexing or the formation of a romantic link with a cheating chatbot. It also follows a recent Bloomberg survey which revealed that around 60% of the Gen Zers are largely wary of the use of AI in dating in general, including using it to write a biography or send messages.

We may see the number of people in a romantic relationship with AI mounted in the near future. An analysis of the Reddit R / MyBoyfriendisai community revealed that only 6.5% of people in a relationship with a chatbot intended for their connection are romantic. But for the moment, it is quite sure to assume that less than 30% of Americans have come out with an AI companion.