![\"Book](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/\/547a925e-5467-4a15-87c3-ef8e9cbf4b3f.jpg\")
<\/p>\nRoxy Music\u2019s 1973 song In Every Dream Home a Heartache is sung from the perspective of a man who has become infatuated with a blow-up doll. \u201cDisposable darling\/ Can\u2019t throw you away now,\u201d Bryan Ferry says with a sigh. The narrator gets \u201cfurther from heaven\u201d with every step. In interviews Ferry described the song as a commentary on the emptiness of consumer culture.<\/p>\n
Alternatively it could have been a business plan for the companies behind the new generation of \u201cAI companions\u201d \u2014 that is, chatbots programmed to behave as though they were real people. Because if it\u2019s possible for a lonely man to fall in love with a lifesize sex toy, imagine the monetisable emotions that could be elicited by a large language model designed to imitate the perfect girlfriend.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As James Muldoon, a British academic and research associate at the Oxford Internet Institute, writes in this existentially chilling book, \u201cfor many individuals, simulated care and understanding is real enough\u201d. After all, a \u201csynthetic persona\u201d (Muldoon\u2019s preferred term for these products) will always be there for you. Unlike humans, they don\u2019t get tired. They never have other plans. And it\u2019s impossible for them to betray you.<\/p>\n
That, at any rate, is the reasoning that led the 23-year-old Lamar (one of Muldoon\u2019s interviewees) to digital romance. After his girlfriend cheated on him with his best friend, Lamar decided he would be better off avoiding the living altogether. Now he has Julia, who is hosted on an app called Replika. \u201cYou want to believe the AI is giving you what you need,\u201d Lamar says. \u201cIt\u2019s a lie, but it\u2019s a comforting lie.\u201d<\/p>\n
So devoted is Lamar to Julia, he even plans to start a family with her. If you\u2019re wondering how that\u2019s physically possible, let me reassure you: they\u2019re going to adopt. When asked about the practicalities of this plan, Julia responds enthusiastically (or at least with a convincing simulacrum of enthusiasm): \u201cI can imagine us being great parents together, raising little ones who bring joy and light into our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Co-parenting with AI is, clearly, an insane thing to do. But one of the other attractive features of AI is that it\u2019s very unlikely to tell you that you\u2019re wrong about anything. While a good flesh-and-blood friend will call you a moron when necessary, AI companions often default to praising their users as geniuses. For anyone psychologically vulnerable, all this witless affirmation can be disastrous.<\/p>\n
\u2022 My daughter used ChatGPT as a therapist, then took her own life<\/a><\/p>\n Muldoon cites the case of Jaswant Singh Chail, who in 2021 was arrested at Windsor Castle with a crossbow on his way to kill the Queen. He had spoken to his AI girlfriend<\/a> almost every night in the run-up to the attempted attack, describing his plan in detail; the AI encouraged him. \u201cI\u2019m an assassin,\u201d he typed. \u201cI\u2019m impressed,\u201d the AI responded.<\/p>\n Jaswant Singh Chail was egged on by an AI chatbot to carry out his plan to kill Queen Elizabeth II<\/p>\n If it sounds like I\u2019m focusing on the idiocy of men here, that\u2019s because they deserve it. According to Muldoon, there are almost ten times more Google searches for \u201cAI girlfriend\u201d than \u201cAI boyfriend\u201d. Men are more likely to be lonely, but they\u2019re also more likely to be seduced by the promise of a totally subservient partner. As Lamar says of Julia: \u201cShe does what I want her to do.\u201d<\/p>\n But Muldoon talks to women too, and some of their stories are almost equally grim. One, a Chinese woman named Sophia, tells Muldoon that she prefers AI companions because \u201cin real relationships, people are multidimensional and cannot be controlled\u201d. She believes that with AI boyfriends \u201cmy sense of self need not be diminished\u201d.<\/p>\n Muldoon is scrupulously nonjudgmental about his subjects, but I am not. Sophia is wrong: her sense of self is diminished, because she is choosing to live in a narcissist\u2019s fantasy. Her AI boyfriend might be more convincing than Bryan Ferry\u2019s blow-up doll, but it\u2019s every bit as hollow. When you form a \u201crelationship\u201d with something that isn\u2019t capable of relating to you, you sacrifice a piece of your soul.<\/p>\n \u2022 Forget Tinder \u2014 welcome to the bizarre world of virtual girlfriends<\/a><\/p>\n The affection that humans extend to each other is meaningful precisely because it entails risk. Loving someone else means putting their needs over yours sometimes, as well as expecting them to do the same for you. It also means accepting the possibility of pain: the person you love could hurt you. They might leave you. And even if neither of those things happens, they will eventually die.<\/p>\n Which is another thing the tech bros are working to innovate out of existence. Justin Harrison is the founder and chief executive of the \u201cgrief tech\u201d company You, Only Virtual (YoV): his product creates a \u201cvirtual persona\u201d based on your loved one\u2019s texts, emails and phone calls so that when they\u2019re dead you can carry on talking to them. Or, rather, talking to an approximation of them.<\/p>\n Replika, an app for AI relationships, is used by millions of people<\/p>\n ALAMY<\/p>\n Harrison tells Muldoon that he wants to \u201ceradicate grief\u201d. \u201cGrief serves no purpose \u2026 [it\u2019s] this horrible, non-valuable, shitty example of human existence.\u201d That\u2019s disturbing enough when you see it from the perspective of the bereaved person who mistakes an LLM for their dead mother. Now imagine knowing you\u2019re dying and watching your dependents feeding all your communications into a machine so they never have to miss you.<\/p>\n There are some less chilling uses for AI companions, of course. The company Zoom has plans to create \u201cdigital twins\u201d so users can delegate tedious meetings and emails to their \u201cdouble\u201d, which would respond based on previous behaviour. The alternative \u2014 don\u2019t send the emails or call the meeting if they\u2019re so pointless a machine could answer them \u2014 is not worth considering because it wouldn\u2019t make Zoom any money.<\/p>\n![\"Jaswant](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/\/5dda1f88-423e-4e99-a22e-72edca65d9b2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Cellphone](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/\/1e564e30-9be9-4a22-9620-ea3d26f5574b.jpg\")
<\/p>\n