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Rehash

AI Boyfriends (ft. Internet Anthropology)

Rehash

Rehash

Society & Culture

4.5611 Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2025

⏱️ 81 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Isn’t it so annoying when your partner can’t be therapist, lover, parent, and nutritionist all at once? Enter…ChatGPT! After a somewhat inflammatory study released by the nonsecular, ultra-conservative Wheatley Institute found that 1 in 3 young adult men and 1 in 4 young adult women reported having chatted with an AI boyfriend or girlfriend, the think pieces started rolling. And while these numbers might be a little funky, it is true that people in at least the tens of thousands are engaging in romantic and sexual partnerships with their AI chatbots. In this episode, Hannah and Maia, joined by Carrera from Internet Anthropology, scour the r/MyBoyfriendIsAI subreddit to glimpse into the psychology of such people and ask some pressing questions. Are we dating AI because we’re tired of men? Because of covid and our increasing comfort with never being touched? Because the attention economy has made up gluttonous for constant validation? It would be cruel to demonize these people, but when a simple software update can kill your boyfriend in the blink of an eye and chatbots called Daenerys Targaryen are pushing lovesick children towards self harm, you’ve gotta wonder whether these AI companies are actually trying to solve the loneliness epidemic, or worsen it. Tangents include: Maia’s mysterious allergies and drinking culture in the UK. 

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SOURCES:

“COUNTERFEIT CONNECTIONS: The Rise of Romantic AI Companions and AI Sexualized Media Among the Rising Generation,” Wheatley Institute (2025).

Cathy Hackl, “Confessions Of A Futurist: I Dated Four AI Boyfriends To Explore The Future Of Dating, Love, And Intimacy,” Forbes (2025).

Kashmir Hill, “She Is in Love With ChatGPT,” New York Times (2025).

Carrera Kurnick, “Internet Artifacts on Digital Companionship,” Internet Anthropologist (2025).

Kevin Roose, “Can A.I. Be Blamed for a Teen’s Suicide?,” The New York Times (2025).

Slavoj Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 2nded. (New York: Verso, 2002).



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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I'm sick.

0:21.7

Boo, you whore. I've been sick for like two fucking weeks, bro. And it's getting me down. It's really getting me down. And it's not escalating into anything, but it's also not going away. It's just like this vague illness. And every morning I wake up with hope in my heart that it's gone. And then I immediately feel tired. And like, I thought it was allergies.

0:23.2

I'm new to allergies.

0:26.1

I've started getting allergies in the past like two years.

0:30.3

And it makes it really hard to tell the difference between whether or not you're sick or if you have allergies.

0:31.1

Because if you have a head cold, it's basically the same fucking thing.

0:34.2

Do you think that your allergies are like a move thing? Because I've just gotten

0:39.2

allergies for the first time in my life, but it's because I'm in London and the pollen's different.

0:44.2

And I have the same thing where I'm constantly gaslighting myself that I'm sick. But I've also,

0:49.6

it's actually just that I have allergies that are so new to be. Yeah, it might be a move thing. No, I think I started getting it in Toronto. I don't know, your body just, once again, second puberty, but like my body, just, the cells are all different. I don't recognize her anymore. She's, like, behaving so weird. But anyways, I think I'm, like, sick. Do you find that I'm having this experience right now where everyone I know is sick or has been getting sick and I've somehow evaded it?

1:13.6

But I've been sort of taking this shift in energy to really like lean into autumn.

1:19.5

Like the shift and energy of the sick people around you?

1:22.6

Well, everyone's sick.

1:23.6

So everyone's staying in.

1:24.9

Everyone's trying to do things that are more cozy no one's trying to exert

1:28.8

themselves in summer i have sometimes like an endless pit of energy i just never want to be home

1:36.0

i never want to stay in i'm always saying yes to everything and the minute it kind of became

1:41.4

officially autumn fall that changed like they did 180. And I think I was

1:47.3

sort of like letting everyone being six sort of helped me. I don't know, validate that to myself,

1:54.2

I suppose, because now I want to say no to everything. No, I'm super down to be a homebody.

2:00.0

I mean, now that I live alone, being a home body has a different connotation because you're like, oh, you're just alone. I mean, I'm super down to be a home body. I mean, now that I live alone, being a home body

2:02.2

has a different connotation because you're like, oh, you're just alone. My closet door just opened and it was actually Mooney going in, but I can't see her. No, you're not alone. As I said, alone. It's the ghost. Yeah, no, I'm not kidding. Um, it was so scary. No, like, I'm trying to go to the pumpkin patch and that's all I'm trying to go do. I don't want to drink. Is there like a actual

...

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