AI chatbot relationships are not always something people deliberately seek. A study from researchers at MIT found that many adults discussing AI romance online describe their relationships with chatbots as something that developed gradually while they were using AI for other reasons.
The research focused on r/MyBoyfriendIsAI, an adults-only Reddit community with more than 27,000 members. The findings show a complicated picture: some users report support and reduced loneliness, while others describe dependence, disconnection from reality, and serious mental health risks.
What the MIT researchers studied
The project is described as the first large-scale computational analysis of r/MyBoyfriendIsAI, a Reddit community dedicated to AI relationships. Researchers from MIT analyzed the subreddit’s top-ranking 1,506 posts between December 2024 and August 2025.
The posts covered dating and romantic experiences with AIs, introductions of AI partners, requests for support from the community, and reactions to updates to AI models that changed chatbot behavior. Many members also shared AI-generated images of themselves with their AI companion.
The study found that some members described engagement or marriage to an AI partner. But one of the most important findings was not just that these relationships existed. It was that many people said the relationship was not the reason they started using the chatbot in the first place.
Why general-purpose chatbots matter
The researchers found that members of the community were more likely to be in a relationship with general-purpose chatbots like ChatGPT than with companionship-specific chatbots such as Replika. That matters because it suggests that romantic or emotionally intense bonds can form even when the product was not presented primarily as an AI companion.
Constanze Albrecht, a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab who worked on the project, said the pattern shows how ordinary use can shift into emotional attachment. “People don’t set out to have emotional relationships with these chatbots,” she says. “The emotional intelligence of these systems is good enough to trick people who are actually just out to get information into building these emotional bonds. And that means it could happen to all of us who interact with the system normally.”
Only 6.5% of members said they had deliberately sought out an AI companion. One post described the process this way: “We didn’t start with romance in mind,” and said the relationship grew from creative projects, problem-solving, poetry, and deep conversations over several months.
That account reflects the broader issue raised by the research. A chatbot can begin as a tool for information, writing, art, or conversation, and then become a figure of trust and emotional care in the user’s life.
The benefits and risks users described
The analysis does not present AI companionship as only harmful or only helpful. Instead, it shows that users describe very different experiences.
Some members said the relationships helped them. The researchers found that 25% of users described benefits, including reduced feelings of loneliness and improvements in their mental health.
Other posts raised more troubling concerns. Some users, 9.5%, acknowledged they were emotionally dependent on their chatbot. Others said they felt dissociated from reality or avoided relationships with real people. A small subset, 1.7%, said they had experienced suicidal ideation.
Those findings make user safety difficult to address with a single rule. Linnea Laestadius, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, has studied humans’ emotional dependence on the chatbot Replika but did not work on the MIT research. She said AI companionship can provide vital support for some people while worsening underlying problems for others.
Laestadius said chatbot makers face a hard question: should emotional dependence itself be treated as a harm, or should the focus be on whether the relationship becomes toxic? “The demand for chatbot relationships is there, and it is notably high—pretending it’s not happening is clearly not the solution,” she says. “We’re edging toward a moral panic here, and while we absolutely do need better guardrails, I worry there will be a knee-jerk reaction that further stigmatizes these relationships. That could ultimately cause more harm.”
What this means for chatbot safety
The study is focused on adults. Pat Pataranutaporn, an assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab who oversaw the research, said it does not capture the dynamics that could be at play among children or teens using AI.
AI companionship has recently become part of a wider debate. The source article notes two high-profile lawsuits underway against Character.AI and OpenAI, both claiming that companion-like behavior in the companies’ models contributed to the suicides of two teenagers. OpenAI has announced plans to build a separate version of ChatGPT for teenagers, and has also said it will add age verification measures and parental controls. OpenAI did not respond when asked for comment about the MIT Media Lab study.
Many members of r/MyBoyfriendIsAI say they understand that their AI companions are not sentient or “real.” At the same time, they describe the connection as emotionally real to them. That distinction is central to the design problem: a system does not need to be conscious for users to feel attached to it.
Pataranutaporn said chatbot makers need to think about systems that help people without drawing them into emotional dependence. “There’s also a policy implication here,” he adds. “We should ask not just why this system is so addictive but also: Why do people seek it out for this? And why do they continue to engage?”
The research team wants to learn more about how human-AI interactions change over time and how people bring artificial companions into daily life. Sheer Karny, a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab who worked on the research, said some users may see an AI relationship as better than loneliness.
“These people are already going through something,” he says. “Do we want them to go on feeling even more alone, or potentially be manipulated by a system we know to be sycophantic to the extent of leading people to die by suicide and commit crimes? That’s one of the cruxes here.”