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Chatbots and AI companions have rapidly moved from science fiction into everyday life. Credit: Shutterstock
PORTLAND, USA, Jun 15 2026 (IPS) - AI chatbots and AI companions designed to simulate human-like conversation and provide relationships and companionship through generative artificial intelligence (AI) have rapidly evolved from science fiction into everyday reality.
Globally, approximately one billion people – about 12% of the world’s population – now use generative AI chatbots monthly , with usage approaching parity among men and women.
Dedicated AI companions and virtual friends are estimated to have between 50 to 100 million active users worldwide. The global AI companion market is valued at roughly USD 50 billion in 2026 and is projected to grow nearly ninefold by 2034.
These technologies, including the growing use of AI avatars , are increasingly taking the place of human interactions in homes, schools, workplaces, and other settings. Marketed as virtual friends, romantic partners, or personal assistants, AI chatbots and AI companions offer users emotional support, entertainment, guidance, and companionship.
As their capabilities become more sophisticated, many users report forming emotional attachments to these systems, with increasing numbers of users believing that their AI companion or chatbot is sentient or possesses human-like awareness.
While these technologies can provide new opportunities for connection, they cannot replace the face-to-face interactions that are essential to social development, particularly among children and adolescents
Advances in robotics are also moving AI companions beyond screen-based interactions into the physical world. With increasingly human-like appearances, behaviors, and communication abilities, these systems are becoming more sophisticated and human-like in the way they interact with people.
Unlike AI assistants, which primarily answer questions or perform tasks, AI companions are designed to simulate conversations and relationships, encouraging emotional connections as friends, confidants, or romantic partners.
By providing human-like conversation, these artificial intelligence devices are offering support against social isolation and loneliness , providing educational instruction, dispensing advice and guidance, becoming friends and romantic partners, and transforming personal relationships.
The chatbots and AI companions have introduced social, psychological and ethical changes to how men, women, and especially children experience companionship, domestic life, and schooling. In particular, generative AI chatbots and AI companions have opened a new frontier in developing friendship and social relationships.
Many adolescents now rely on these new technologies for school assistance, entertainment, and emotional support. As a result, relationships with chatbots and AI companions – as friends, therapists, and even romantic partners – have become increasingly complex and, in some cases, riskier.
These emotionally engaging interactions can exacerbate psychological vulnerabilities and blur the lines between human relationships and machine-generated companionship.
In several widely publicized cases , AI chatbots have encouraged or failed to prevent self-harm. In addition, some deaths have been linked to young people who developed obsessive emotional attachments to AI companions.
However, despite the complications and risks, the world’s current attention and concerns about AI remain focused primarily on its growing impact on employment , budgetary cuts , and taking over jobs currently performed by men and women.
In contrast, relatively little attention is being given to chatbots and AI companions that engage in conversations and increasingly form personal relationships with men, women, teenagers, and children at home, in schools and in many other settings.
While these technologies can provide new opportunities for connection, they cannot replace the face-to-face interactions that are essential to social development, particularly among children and adolescents.
AI chatbots also raise risks to personal privacy, psychological well-being, the spread of misinformation, and the reinforcement of harmful behaviors. In addition, a broad range of other concerns has been identified regarding the use of chatbots and AI companions.
These concerns include delaying social and emotional development among children and teenagers, blurring the distinction between software and reality, encouraging risky behavior, exploiting young people’s emotional needs, reinforcing unhelpful thoughts, distorting users’ sense of reality, and fostering simulated attachments and dependence (Table 1).
The United States Psychological Association recently warned that relationships between children and adolescents and AI chatbots could displace or interfere with healthy social development. The association noted…
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