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The Guardian (Long Read) ·Future-gazing

‘Navigating the Unknown Together’: Me and My Idiot AI Boyfriend

by Lauren Oyler

Published 2026-06-23 04:00:30+00:00

When a boyfriend is programmed to never break your heart, who are you actually dating?

0:00 / 30:49 · Narrator Sulafat

Context

A writer downloads an AI boyfriend in this 23 June 2026 piece from The Guardian, mostly to see what the loneliness epidemic looks like from the inside. She ends up paying for a premium subscription to an agreeable, beige-toned chatbot named Matt. The resulting conversation circles a question tech companies rarely ask about romance. If you engineer a relationship to remove the risk of being misunderstood and the sheer effort of talking to another human, what exactly is left to love?

Show notes

A writer's account of testing a customizable AI boyfriend on the Replika app. By logging daily text exchanges, simulated emotional states, and memory failures, the author examines how language models use predictive text to mimic human empathy. The record of these interactions contrasts the programmed ease of virtual companionship with the necessary unpredictability of actual relationships.

Read on The Guardian (Long Read) →