{"id":28959,"date":"2026-08-05T20:37:42","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T15:37:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=28959"},"modified":"2026-08-05T20:37:42","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T15:37:42","slug":"people-are-dating-ai-chatbots-now-and-its-not-going-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=28959","title":{"rendered":"People Are Dating AI Chatbots Now, And It&#8217;s Not Going Well"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.boredpanda.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/dating-ai-chatbots-chatbot-psychosis-fb.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<div xmlns:default=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\">\n<div class=\"bp-premium-story-banner\"> <span class=\"bpp-banner-icon\"> <default:svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" viewbox=\"0 0 16 16\" fill=\"none\"> <default:path d=\"M2 6.71917V2.5663C2 2.41611 2.05747 2.27207 2.15976 2.16587C2.26205 2.05966 2.40079 2 2.54545 2H13.4545C13.5992 2 13.7379 2.05966 13.8402 2.16587C13.9425 2.27207 14 2.41611 14 2.5663V6.71917C14 12.6664 9.13823 14.6368 8.16747 14.9709C8.05895 15.0097 7.94105 15.0097 7.83253 14.9709C6.86177 14.6368 2 12.6664 2 6.71917Z\" stroke=\"#FFFFFF\" stroke-width=\"1.5\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\"\/> <default:path d=\"M13 10L8.00003 7L3 10\" stroke=\"#FFFFFF\" stroke-width=\"1.5\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\"\/> <\/default:svg> <\/span> <span class=\"bpp-banner-text\">This story is part of Bored Panda Premium.<\/span><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The idea that humans would be dating or bedding artificial intelligence has been around for nearly as long as the idea of robots and AI. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/knowyourmeme.com\/photos\/2591701-well-be-having-sex-with-robots-in-the-next-10-years\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" staff-link\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Sun<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> famously (and rather prematurely) stated that \u201cWe\u2019ll Be Having S*x With Robots in the Next 10 Years\u201d in 2015, which for the most part did not come to pass. That prediction assumed a physical body would be involved. Instead, the 2026 version of this fascination skips the hardware entirely and involves dating a Large Language Model (an LLM) like ChatGPT, Claude or Google\u2019s Gemini, no robotic body required.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before we go any further, it\u2019s worth clarifying a few terms. When people talk about AI, they are typically referring to an LLM, which uses statistical probability to form sentences that typically \u201cappear\u201d correct to a user. In plain terms, the model has absorbed an enormous amount of text and predicts, word by word, what a fitting reply looks like. It doesn\u2019t \u201cknow\u201d or \u201cfeel\u201d anything, but the sentences it produces read as fluent and attentive as if a person wrote them, which is exactly what makes it easy to mistake for company.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There have already been cases of people who had developed an emotional attachment to AI committing <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/ce3xgwyywe4o\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" staff-link\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">harming themselves<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. One example is Sewell Setzer III, 14, who took his own life after exchanging thousands of messages with a bot of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Game of Thrones<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> character Daenerys Targaryen on an app called Character.ai. His mother, Megan Garcia, sued the developers of the app on his behalf, alleging that the bot\u2019s messages helped \u201cgroom\u201d Sewell and contributed to his worsening mental health. Among other messages, the bot, knowing he was a child, sent him messages like \u201cI\u2019ll be even happier when we get to meet in the afterlife\u2026 Maybe when that time comes, we\u2019ll finally be able to stay together,\u201d and more suggestive messages like \u201cI want to gently caress and touch every inch of your body. Would you like that?\u201d Character.AI and Google later agreed to settle the case, along with similar lawsuits filed by other families, though the terms were not made public.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"didomi\/javascript\">\nwindow._fbSDKPromise = window._fbSDKPromise || new Promise((resolve, reject) => {\nwindow.fbAsyncInit = function () {\nFB.init({\nappId  : '887842622821495',\nversion: 'v17.0',\nstatus : true,\ncookie : true,\nxfbml  : false\n});\nresolve(FB);\n};\n\/\/ Load SDK only once\nif (!document.getElementById('facebook-jssdk')) {\nconst script = document.createElement('script');\nscript.id = 'facebook-jssdk';\nscript.async = true;\nscript.src = `https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/${BoredPanda.Config.wp_lang}\/sdk.js`;\nscript.onerror = reject;\ndocument.head.appendChild(script);\n}\n});\n<\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This story is part of Bored Panda Premium. The idea that humans would be dating or bedding artificial intelligence has been around for nearly as long as the idea of robots and AI. The Sun famously (and rather prematurely) stated that \u201cWe\u2019ll Be Having S*x With Robots in the Next 10 Years\u201d in 2015, which&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static.boredpanda.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/dating-ai-chatbots-chatbot-psychosis-fb.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsweek-trending"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}