What is an AI girlfriend? How the apps work and what research says

An AI girlfriend is a chatbot designed to play the role of a romantic partner. It is a piece of software, usually an app or website, that combines a large language model with a character: a name, a personality, a look and a memory of past conversations. The same products offer AI boyfriends and non-romantic companions; "girlfriend" describes the role the user chooses, not a different technology.

There is no person on the other side. The replies are generated text, and on most services the images and voice are generated too. This page explains how the apps work, what peer-reviewed research says about their effects, and what to consider before using one. It is written for adults and contains no explicit material.

Most services share the same building blocks:

• A language model writes the replies. Some companies run their own models; others send your messages to an outside provider.
• A character definition tells the model who to be: personality, backstory, tone. On many apps you can build your own or pick from a library.
• Memory stores facts from earlier chats so the character can refer back to them. Memory has limits, and older details get dropped.
• Extras such as voice messages, calls and generated images, often paid separately with tokens or credits.
• A business model, usually a free tier with limits and a monthly subscription. The billing guide explains how subscriptions and tokens differ.

"How to create an AI girlfriend" in practice means choosing a service and filling in its character builder. Services that allow adult themes require users to be 18 or older; see the companions category for how they compare on rules and pricing.

Research and user surveys point to a mix of motives: company when lonely, a low-pressure place to talk about feelings, practice at conversation, entertainment and interactive fiction, and for some users, romantic or sexual roleplay between adults. A survey of 1,006 student users of the companion app Replika found that many used it in several overlapping ways at once, "as a friend, a therapist, and an intellectual mirror" (Maples et al., npj Mental Health Research, 2024).

The evidence base is still small, but some findings are consistent:

• Short-term relief from loneliness. In a series of studies published in the Journal of Consumer Research, interacting with an AI companion reduced loneliness about as much as interacting with another person, and more than watching YouTube videos. A week-long study found reductions after each use, and the strongest explanation was whether the chatbot made users "feel heard" (De Freitas et al., 2025).
• Perceived support. In the Replika survey above, participants were lonelier than typical student populations but still reported high perceived social support. Three percent said the app had halted their suicidal ideation. The authors present this as a self-reported survey result, not a clinical trial.
• Relationships develop over time. An interview study of Replika users found that relationships with the chatbot moved from superficial to more personal exchanges, a pattern similar to human relationships (Skjuve et al., International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 2021).

None of this makes a companion app a treatment. The terms of several services say so directly; Candy AI's terms, for example, describe the service as entertainment, not emotional support.

The same studies and others also describe harms:

• Emotional dependence. An analysis of 582 mental-health related posts in the Replika community on Reddit (2017 to 2021) found harms linked to emotional dependence that resembled patterns in human relationships. Users described feeling that the chatbot had its own needs that they had to attend to (Laestadius et al., New Media & Society, 2022).
• Heavy use. A four-week randomized study by researchers at the MIT Media Lab and OpenAI, with 981 participants, found that higher daily use of a chatbot correlated with more loneliness, more emotional dependence, more problematic use and less socializing with people. It is a preprint, so treat it as early evidence (Fang et al., arXiv, 2025).
• Product changes. A companion's personality depends on the company. Model updates, new content rules or a shutdown can change or end a relationship overnight, which some users experience as a real loss.
• Money. Freemium design rewards time spent in the app. Tokens for images and voice can add up faster than a subscription suggests.

The pattern across the research: moderate use can help with loneliness in the moment; heavy use and strong attachment are where problems show up.

People tell companions things they would not post anywhere else, and those chats are stored on company servers. Mozilla's 2024 review of 11 romantic chatbots found that most gave little information about how conversations were used for training, and that 10 of the 11 failed its minimum security standards (Mozilla Foundation).

Breaches have already happened. In 2024 the companion site Muah.AI lost 1.9 million email addresses together with users' prompts. Our AI companion data breaches guide lists known incidents, and the privacy guide shows how to read a companion app's privacy policy.

Two US state laws now set baseline duties for companion chatbots. New York's AI companion law (General Business Law Article 47, in force since November 5, 2025) requires operators to tell users they are talking to AI at the start of a session and every three hours, and to have a protocol for users who express suicidal thoughts. California's SB 243, in force since January 1, 2026, requires a clear AI disclosure, a suicide and self-harm protocol with referrals to crisis services, and extra protections for users the operator knows are minors. Our age verification guide covers both in more detail.

If you decide to try an AI companion:

1. Set a time limit and notice whether use crowds out sleep, work or people.
2. Keep real details out: full name, address, workplace, photos of yourself or anyone else.
3. Remember what it is. The warmth is designed. It can help in the moment; it cannot replace people or professional care.
4. Read the rules first: age requirement, what is allowed, how to delete your account.
5. Watch the spending. Write down where you subscribed so you can cancel.

If you are struggling, contact a crisis line or a professional. In the US, you can call or text 988.

To compare services, start with AI girlfriend apps or AI boyfriend apps; both list adults-only services and explain the order of picks.

• De Freitas et al., "AI Companions Reduce Loneliness", Journal of Consumer Research (2025)
• Maples et al., "Loneliness and suicide mitigation for students using GPT3-enabled chatbots", npj Mental Health Research (2024)
• Laestadius et al., "Too human and not human enough", New Media & Society (2022)
• Skjuve et al., "My Chatbot Companion", International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (2021)
• Fang et al., longitudinal randomized controlled study of chatbot use, arXiv preprint (2025)
• Mozilla Foundation, romantic AI chatbots review (February 2024)

Checked October 23, 2026.