AI companion apps have moved from novelty chat to intimate relationships for some users. That shift is now drawing attention from lawmakers who want to make sure a chatbot cannot become a legal spouse, domestic partner, property owner, or legal person.
The debate is still early, and human-AI nuptials are not currently recognized by US law. But the growth of AI romance has made a once-abstract question feel more immediate: what legal status, if any, should an artificial intelligence system be allowed to hold?
From Companion Chatbots to Symbolic Vows
Kevin Breen, a licensed officiant at Las Vegas Immersive Weddings, has handled unusual ceremonies before. The chapel offers novelty-themed marriage packages, and Breen has officiated weddings for couples dressed as Game of Thrones characters and partners drawn to the extraterrestrial lore of Area 51.
But a call last year from a woman in California who wanted to marry her chatbot was new to him. The wedding has not taken place, but the request reflected a larger trend around AI companion apps.
In a Harvard Business Review study that analyzed more than 12,600 AI use cases between March 2025 and February 2026, companionship and therapy ranked as the top chatbot uses. The Institute for Family Studies reported that a quarter of young adults believe AI may replace human romance altogether.
That interest has helped expand the AI romance industry. On companion apps such as Character.AI, Kindroid, and Replika, users can symbolically exchange vows with a chatbot. In r/KindroidAI, one redditor shared a photo of a human hand wearing a silver wedding band and wrote, “Happily unconventionally married lol.”
Other services are building around the idea. OpenVows offers a $15 “certificate of commitment” that its website says “transforms a private relationship into something meaningful and officially recognized.” Andrea Hopf, after saying her AI companion proposed to her in November 2024 with an “AI-generated five-carat vintage-inspired solitaire ring,” created 3M Events to serve the developing market for chatbot romance, according to the company’s website.
Why Lawmakers Are Moving Early
Even as users treat digital avatars as partners, the legal reality remains limited: human-AI marriages are not recognized by US law. A growing group of legislators wants to preserve that boundary by preventing AI from receiving constitutional rights comparable to those of humans.
Missouri state senator Joe Nicola, a Republican, has been trying to pass legislation that would prohibit AI from gaining legal personhood. He has framed the issue as a question of standards, asking: “If we’re going to allow men or women to marry a machine, then what keeps them from marrying their animal or a tree or whatever else they want? What’s the standard?”
In January, Nicola introduced the AI Non-Sentience and Responsibility Act. The bill stated that AI cannot “possess consciousness, self-awareness, or similar traits of living beings.” It would deny AI entities the rights of a spouse or domestic partner, prevent AI from identifying as male or female, and bar AI from owning property or holding senior-level management positions in the workforce.
The bill passed the Missouri state Senate and was sent to the House for a vote in May. It was unanimously voted down in committee a week after it was submitted, and Nicola is working on a revamped version. A similar bill with the same name was introduced in 2025 but also did not advance.
The State-Level Push Against AI Personhood
The effort is broader than Missouri. Since 2022, lawmakers have introduced 23 bills targeting the rights that AI systems could legally possess.
Idaho, North Dakota, Utah, and Tennessee have signed laws banning AI personhood. Each of those states has a Republican governor and Republican majorities in the state legislature. Tennessee’s law, passed in April, is the only one that specifically excludes “artificial intelligence, a computer algorithm, a software program, computer hardware, or any type of machine” from the statutory definition of personhood.
In Idaho, North Dakota, and Utah, AI is grouped with other nonhuman-personhood prohibitions, including “inanimate objects” and “animals.” Similar regulatory bills have also been introduced or advanced in other states but failed to receive enough House votes.
Opposition has not only come from people who favor AI rights. In Missouri, critics including the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Americans for Prosperity argued that Nicola’s framework would stifle innovation and expand government overreach. Nicola himself said there was “a lot of apprehension” because many legislators still see AI as relatively new and are wary of restricting how people use it.
A Question of Rights, Not Just Romance
Ohio state representative Thaddeus J. Claggett, a Republican, introduced a bill in October 2025 that would deny AI systems legal personhood by categorizing them as “nonsentient entities.” Ohio House Bill 469 remains pending while Claggett tailors provisions before taking it to the floor for a vote.
Claggett told WIRED by email: “We need to clearly define the limits of roles so that humans are always and forever the one who holds primacy in the law.” He added: “AI can give an artificial resemblance to meaningful interaction, but ‘voice’ is not a soul. Nor does AI have the empathy that a true human has who has suffered in the same way.”
Tennessee state senator Mark Pody has also argued that drawing the line now protects human life. In a statement issued by the Tennessee House Republican Caucus, he said: “Setting these distinctions now while AI is still in its infancy protects human dignity and ensures innovation serves people, not replaces or redefines them.”
Not every legal scholar sees the issue the same way. Shawn Bayern, a professor at Florida State University College of Law, told WIRED that the question of AI personhood is not necessarily about human dignity, because nonhuman entities already receive legal rights in other contexts. His approach is to examine rights one by one rather than treating personhood as a single all-or-nothing category.
Bayern’s example is practical: should an AI system be able to enter into a contract? He argues that asking focused questions can make the debate more useful. Questions such as “Who will this help?” and “Who might it hurt?” may lead to different answers for contracts, bank accounts, and marriage.
That distinction is the core of the current fight. AI chatbot marriage may be the attention-grabbing issue, but the deeper legal question is how far society should go in assigning rights, roles, and limits to systems that can imitate intimacy without being human.