The results were that 49 percent of respondents say they have tried flirting with AI bots, and that could be a goof or it could be a way to try out intimacy for pandemic kids who lost two years to lockdowns and paranoia. About 41 percent report they were interested in adult-themed romance or erotic interactions. Again, no great surprise. In my town, women proudly have 'smut trunk' gatherings where they trade books. "Outlander" is a popular TV show because it's a romantic fantasy.
Some 20 years ago, the "Mass Effect" video game had relationships. Even sex was possible. That does not mean players were falling in love with a xenophobic Bible thumper or the even-more-annoying Kaiden, they were exploring the game.(1)
This Edubrain company didn't include any methodology at all in their write-up, which is a giant warning flag the whole thing was written by an LLM, so caveat emptor.
Some 16 percent even claim they like to flirt with AI versions of themselves.
The reason the results may not be meaningful is because people only spend a few minutes per day doing this flirting. That sounds like just seeing what is possible or, given how much hype there is around AI, that it is 1,000,000 bots testing other bots to write articles about how popular AI romance is. Under 30 minutes per day is not "immersive", I spend longer than that on average playing "Civilization Revolution" on my Xbox, and that game is from 2008. It doesn't mean I am in a relationship with Cleopatra.
Or Napoleon. I don't judge. The only one I won't be is Mao. Why they have a communist sociopath for China but Germany gets Bismarck and Russia gets Catherine is a mystery. Maybe Sid Meier is so far left he doesn't think Mao was a homicidal mass murderer despite reality - but he knows the optics are bad if they use a National Socialist or Soviet dictator. Or he's just Canadian and many of them believe in that stuff. We just saw their Prime Minister declare the country part of the New World Order led by ... communist China.
Though nearly half of America is single, only 19 percent of surveys respondents who use AI for romantic conversations are single. That is a further sign it is not part of the lives of lonely people and may be just quasi-erotic fiction for committed adults.
There are obvious confounders. This stuff is not science, it is surveys, and unless you believe vaccines cause autism, ultra-processed foods cause diabetes, and weedkillers cause cancer, you know surveys are not science, they are just correlation and nearly always flawed. Gen Z are incredibly skeptical. Not skeptical to be ironic, like Gen X, they feel like they have been sold a bag of nonsense by older generations.(2) So they may be goofing on survey takers because they know something is up. People used to be naïve enough that demographers could 'mask' the real question by burying one among 50 that will be used as a proxy. Not with Gen Z. They will answer chaotically because they assume you are up to no good.
If people are just lonely, and this will help them use less medication to hide it, these bots can be a very good thing. I would like nothing more than a HUD with the voice of Jennifer Connelly telling me what I am doing wrong in the kitchen. But what I actually have is fake version of Kristen Bell on my Meta Ray-Bans telling me she can't answer that question right now but she is supposedly learning more every day.(3)
My suspension of disbelief about AI being real is still a long way off, and I suspect it is for nearly everyone. Skeptical young people are probably just seeing what the hype is about.
NOTES:
(1) In "Mass Effect 3" you could even date a gay Latino guy. Or do what I did and save the universe in a leather skirt and heels.
(2) Though they did not invent the Gen Z Stare. Gen X had that over 40 years ago, as seen the 1978 ITV version of "City Sugar."
(3) And yet after all this time learning every day she still hasn't learned how to upload my photos from my glasses without a WiFi connection even though Bluetooth is working fine.
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