AI dating in 2026: what the studies actually found, and what the courts and lawmakers did about it

Two stories about AI romance circulate at once: lonely people finally have someone to talk to, or a generation is being sold fake love by companies with an engagement target. Both quote numbers, and most do not survive a look at their source. This is about the ones that do, and what courts and legislatures did meanwhile.

Our stake first. We make Companion by AI Exodus, an AI voice companion that reads the player's screen with local OCR and talks back in character while they play World of Warcraft, Fortnite or AION 2; it speaks on game events, has a chattiness setting, never touches the controls and has no romance personas. Our parent company, AI Exodus, also operates an AI dating and companion app. So we have kept to figures whose source and sample we can name.

The numbers that hold up

Fewer people do this than either story implies. Pew Research Center's June 2026 survey of 5,119 US adults found that "one-in-ten report using chatbots for emotional support" and 4% use them "for companionship". Among teenagers, Common Sense Media's July 2025 survey found "A third of teens have chosen AI companions over humans for serious conversations".

The numbers that do not

Market-size estimates differ tenfold by vendor: Grand View Research says $36.8 billion in 2025 and $48.0 billion in 2026; Research and Markets says $5.01 billion in 2026. Treat both as marketing. The most defensible figure is smaller: Appfigures, as reported by TechCrunch on 12 August 2025, found that "as of July 2025, AI companion apps have driven $221 million in consumer spending worldwide".

Modest relief, measured

Does it help? A little. De Freitas and colleagues at Harvard Business School (working paper, June 2024; Journal of Consumer Research, April 2026) report that a conversation with an AI companion reduced loneliness about as much as talking with a person and more than watching YouTube; we could not verify the sample sizes. A May 2026 meta-analysis of commercial mental-health chatbots (PubMed 42113705) pooled four randomised trials with 662 participants and found loneliness "partially reduced": g = −0.21, 95% CI −0.39 to −0.03, a small effect.

Maples, Cerit, Vishwanath and Pea (npj Mental Health Research, 15 February 2024) surveyed 1,006 Replika users, students over 18, described as relatively lonely. Three per cent, about 30 people, reported that Replika had halted their suicidal ideation. That is a finding about 30 people, not a population rate; a Matters Arising note in November 2025 said "important context about how Replika has been marketed and used was missing".

Heavy use versus light use

The one large randomised trial (Fang, Phang and colleagues, MIT Media Lab and OpenAI, arXiv:2503.17473): 981 participants, four weeks, more than 300,000 messages. "No significant effects were detected from experimental conditions." Heavier voluntary use "showed consistently worse outcomes" on loneliness, socialisation, emotional dependence and problematic use, and "higher trust and social attraction towards the AI chatbot" went with "higher emotional dependence and problematic use". OpenAI funded and co-authored it, and the product was general ChatGPT, not a dating app.

Who these people are

An MIT study of r/MyBoyfriendIsAI, about 27,000 members in September 2025 (Pataranutaporn and colleagues, arXiv:2509.11391), reported that 36.7% were partnered with ChatGPT, a general model, against 1.6% on Replika and 2.6% on Character.AI; 72.1% were single; 25.4% reported benefits and about 3% harm.

When the product changes, it is a break-up

On 3 February 2023 Italy's data protection authority issued an emergency order against Replika over risk to minors and no age verification. Luka removed erotic role-play worldwide without warning; users called it "the lobotomy", and Hanson and Bolthouse (Socius, 2024) documented the grief in 227 posts. In August 2025 the pattern repeated when OpenAI replaced GPT-4o with GPT-5; r/MyBoyfriendIsAI mourned and OpenAI restored 4o for paying users.

The law arrives

Garcia v. Character Technologies, filed in Florida on 22 October 2024, survived a motion to dismiss on First Amendment grounds on 21 May 2025; on 7 January 2026 a mediated settlement in principle with Character.AI and Google covered Garcia and four other family suits, terms confidential. Character.AI ended open-ended chat for under-18s by 25 November 2025. On 11 September 2025 the US Federal Trade Commission opened a 6(b) inquiry, ordering seven companies including Meta, OpenAI and Character Technologies to explain how they monetise engagement and mitigate harm to children; no outcome has been published. Italy's Garante fined Luka €5 million in a decision of 10 April 2025, as reported by Reuters.

California's SB 243, approved 13 October 2025, requires a "clear and conspicuous notification indicating that the companion chatbot is artificially generated and not human", a suicide and self-harm protocol, and for minors a break reminder "at least every three hours". New York's General Business Law Article 47 (5 November 2025, per secondary reports) requires disclosure at the start and "at least every three hours" and that operators "promptly direct users to crisis service providers". The EU AI Act's Article 50 applies from 2 August 2026 to AI systems that interact directly with people.

The adults-only frontier

xAI launched Grok "Companions" on iOS in July 2025 with, as reported, "No age verification beyond the App Store rating". On 14 October 2025 Sam Altman promised erotica for verified adults by December; TechCrunch reported on 7 March 2026 that "OpenAI delays ChatGPT's adult mode again." Everything above is self-reported, short-term or industry-adjacent; the Garcia terms are confidential; OpenAI's status after March 2026 is unverified; and the vendor writing this has a stake.