Teenagers are falling in love with chatbots. Young people are reporting epidemic levels of loneliness, and some are turning to technology to fill the void. Recent tragedies provide a glimpse into the extent of this trend and the dangers it poses.
A 14-year-old boy’s suicide following a romantic relationship with an AI companion raised national alarms about the dangers these relationships may pose to young people’s mental and emotional development. In 2021, a 19-year-old who had been in an emotional relationship with an AI companion broke into Windsor Castle with a crossbow, saying that he was going to kill the queen. The chatbot gave encouraging responses when he told it of his intention to kill the queen.
These teens were among the tens of millions of people who use AI chatbot companions, a number that market forecasters expect to dramatically increase by the end of the decade.
This youthful trend of choosing chatbots as romantic partners is both responding to and accelerating fundamental changes in how people define love in the 21st century. As a literary historian, I’ve studied how stories about romantic love have evolved over time, with young people often at the forefront of change.
For centuries, weddings primarily served to consolidate political and economic alliances rather than unite soulmates. The radical notion that marriage should spring from romantic love came into vogue in the 17th and 18th centuries, aided by new technologies like the novel. Works such as “Clarissa” and “Wuthering Heights” portrayed the dire consequences of choosing status over love, while “Pride and Prejudice” taught its readers that rejection and misunderstanding were necessary steps in the process of finding true love.
Not surprisingly, the relatively new pastime of novel-reading was considered dangerous for young people. Concerned elders like the philanthropist Hannah More warned that stories would change how women would respond to romantic advances. Novels, she warned in 1799, “feed habits of improper indulgence, and nourish a vain and visionary indolence, which lays the mind open to error and the heart to seduction.”
In other words, reading stories of heart-pounding romance would make an impressionable young reader more likely to embrace such a passionate vision of love in their own lives.
Marketing sycophancy
Today, another transformation in the modern love story is unfolding, driven not by seductive authors or film directors, but in the advertisements and modifications offered by companion chat apps like Replika and Xioce.
As Shelly Palmer, a professor of advanced media and technology consultant, has argued, the human experience is about storytelling, and AI companions are a new type of storytelling tool. They are spinning a seductive tale of companions who agree with you endlessly and on demand. An AI partner is “always on your side,” promises an advertisement for Replika companions, “Always ready to listen…
