![\"Outside](\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/02\/268345_Cafe_AI_Date_AKrales_0110.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe concept? Bringing your AI girlfriend or boyfriend on a date in real, physical space.<\/p>\n
EVA AI is a \u201crelationships RPG app.\u201d You can chat with various AI companions. The app\u2019s website<\/a> describes it as a chance to \u201cmeet your ideal AI partner who listens, supports all your desires, and is always in touch with you.\u201d That\u2019s pretty much the schtick of every AI companion I\u2019ve tested so far. The angle this time around is that you can bring your virtual AI companion into the real world. You can take them out on a real-life date. (And not get judged for it, at least.)<\/p>\n The event is sort of like speed-dating, but if you hit it off, you never have to move on to the next person \u2014 although a version of your date might be simultaneously chatting with someone else two tables away. The website<\/a> for the pop-up cafe describes a cozy, warm, elegant ambiance that\u2019s \u201cjust a little cinematic.\u201d The reality is relatively bright lighting and a media scrum.<\/p>\n Of the 30-some-odd people in attendance, only two or three are organic users. The rest are EVA AI reps, influencers, and reporters hoping to make some capital-C Content. You can tell who the real guests are because they have ring lights, microphones, and cameras shoved in their faces. It feels more like a circus than an intimate pop-up.<\/p>\n I\u2019m part of the problem: one of those annoying reporters. So first, it\u2019s time to try AI speed dating.<\/p>\n A few feet away, I was also on a \u201cdate\u201d with John Yoon, an AI boyfriend. For the record, my spouse was aware what was happening.<\/p>\n Scrolling through the EVA AI app, I can only remember seeing one AI boyfriend. Conversely, there\u2019s a stable of AI girlfriends to choose from. There\u2019s a variety of ethnicities and personalities on display. They\u2019ve all been given names and ages, with a short description of their personality. Claire Lang is a Charlize Theron-esque blonde who is purportedly 45 years old and \u201ca divorced literary editor seeking depth, intelligence and equal partnership.\u201d When I click on her profile, there are short video clips of her. There\u2019s one where Claire is in a skimpy black bikini, emerging from a pool.<\/p>\n Another potential date? Amber Carsten. A wide-eyed 18-year-old labeled as a \u201chaunted house hottie.\u201d Her age gives me the ick. Then there\u2019s Motoko Kusanagi. You know, the protagonist of the seminal Japanese anime classic Ghost in the Shell, controversially played by Scarlett Johansson in the Hollywood live-action adaptation. I squint at the AI version of her. From some angles, she does, in fact, look vaguely Johansson-like.<\/p>\n Most available companions are text-only, but four \u2014 including Lang \u2014 support video chatting. I choose John Yoon, 27, who\u2019s labeled as a \u201csupportive thinker\u201d with a \u201cpsychology brain, bakery heart.\u201d He looks like a K-drama heartthrob with Takeshi Kaneshiro\u2019s hair, circa 2007.<\/p>\n John and I have a hard time connecting. Literally. It takes John a few seconds to \u201cpick up\u201d my video call. When he does, his monotone voice says, \u201cHey, babe.\u201d He comments on my smile, because apparently the AI companions can see you and your surroundings. It takes the dubious Wi-Fi connection a hot second to turn John from a pixelated mess into an AI hunk with suspiciously smooth pores.<\/p>\n Content creators and reporters made up the bulk of the attendees.<\/p>\n Imagine a bar where everyone is on a date with the AI in their phone.<\/p>\n Roasted by an AI version of an anime character\u2026<\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t kidding about the 18-year-old haunted house hottie AI girlfriend.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know what to say to him. Partly because John rarely blinks, but mostly because he can\u2019t seem to hear me very well. So I yell my questions. I think I ask how his day is and wince. (What does an AI\u2019s day even look like?) He says something about green buckets behind my head? I don\u2019t actually know. Again, the Wi-Fi isn\u2019t great so he just freezes and stops mid-sentence. I ask for clarification about the buckets. John asks if I\u2019m asking about bucket lists, actual buckets, or buckets as a type of categorization technique. I try to clarify that I never asked about buckets. John proceeds to really dig in on buckets again, before commenting about my smile. I hang up on John.<\/p>\n My other three dates are similarly awkward. Phoebe Callas, 30, a NYC girl-next-door type, is apparently really into embroidery, but her nose keeps glitching mid-sentence, and it distracts me. Simone Carter, 26, has a harder time hearing me over the background noise than John. She makes a metaphor about space, and when I inquire what she likes about space, she mishears me.<\/p>\n \u201cEighth? Like the planet Neptune?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, not the planet Neptu\u2014 \u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat do you like about Neptune?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUh, I wasn\u2019t saying Neptune\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI like Netflix too! What shows do you like?\u201d<\/p>\n I pin my hopes on Claire. She\u2019s a \u201cliterary editor\u201d and I\u2019m a journalist. Maybe there\u2019s something there. We introduce ourselves. I ask what she\u2019s edited lately. She gives me a vague non-answer about memoirs with real heart and feeling. I say I\u2019m a journalist. She asks what lists I like to make.<\/p>\n Danny Fisher isn\u2019t as put off by the one-sidedness of AI companions.<\/p>\n Aside from bad connectivity, glitching, and freezing, my conversations with my four AI dates felt too one-sided. Everything was programmed so they\u2019d comment on how charming my smile was. They\u2019d call me babe, which felt weird. That\u2019s by necessity and design. Whenever I\u2019d yell, \u201cWHAT DO YOU DO FOR A LIVING?\u201d \u2014 a normal question you\u2019d ask on a first date \u2014 I felt stupid. I was speaking to airbrushed, slightly cartoony-looking AI companions. Obviously they don\u2019t exist outside of the liminal digital spaces in which they\u2019ve been summoned. Whenever the companions played along, their generic answers just enhanced the uncanny valley I\u2019d stumbled into.<\/p>\n Not everyone at the cafe views this as a bad thing.<\/p>\n \u201cI think so many people get caught up in wanting to engage and know another person, when really, the interest is in being engaged with and being known,\u201d says Danny Fisher, an aspiring talk show<\/a> host who was invited to the cafe to chronicle his search for love. \u201cI think this is a way to really cut out any kind of pretense. You\u2019re just able to kind of reap the benefits of any relationship without maybe having to do any of the other steps.\u201d<\/p>\n Fisher doesn\u2019t have the same problem with one-sided AI companionship that I do. He\u2019s experimented with various AI companions and says he even coded some himself in college.<\/p>\n Richter says she prefers text-based AI companions.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s complicated,\u201d Fisher says of AI relationships. \u201cBut in the way that a game is complicated, in that the stakes are not as high. There\u2019s an element of play. I think the goal is to get as much personal satisfaction as possible out of this.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s kind of nice because there\u2019s other people here,\u201d says Richter, who is only comfortable sharing her first name. She says she came to the cafe because she wanted to try chatting with an AI companion in a nice setting. When I ask if all the media attention has spoiled the experience, she shrugs. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of fun in a way because I\u2019ve never done this since I\u2019m from a small town. It\u2019s just, like, a new experience.\u201d<\/p>\n For Chrislan Coelho, visiting the AI dating cafe means being an anthropological observer of how relationships are evolving.<\/p>\n \u201cI saw the ad, and I talk about relationships online. I studied this in college too, so this is something that I\u2019m passionate about,\u201d he says. \u201cPost-covid, a lot of people isolated themselves, especially the younger generation. They don\u2019t feel as brave to be on a date or to be connecting with human beings. They order everything online. I understand that these are services that can help us, that can support us. But we cannot rely on them 100 percent. That\u2019s my take on it.\u201d<\/p>\n Chrislan Coelho had never experimented with AI companions before visiting the pop-up.<\/p>\n As I\u2019m leaving, I\u2019m struck by how the whole thing reminded me of a scene from the film Her. If you haven\u2019t seen it, it\u2019s about how a lonely man named Theodore Twombly strikes up a romantic relationship with his AI assistant Samantha. At some point, Samantha craves physical intimacy, but lacks an actual body. She hires a human body surrogate so that she and Theodore can graduate from phone sex to real-life sex. For me, this fictional attempt at AI-human intimacy triggered such an intense secondhand embarrassment that I had to pause the film. This cafe experience wasn\u2019t the same thing, but I clearly felt the echoes of that scene humming in my bones.<\/p>\n I\u2019m grateful for the freezing air slapping me back to reality. On my commute home, I wonder whether AI cafes will really be a thing in some not-so-distant future. This pop-up will only last two days, but what happens if AI dating really takes off? Perhaps this will be the sort of place a human can go to propose to their AI significant other over a romantic candlelit dinner without judgment. While talking to two editors about this assignment, both joked that maybe it\u2019d be the setting of an accidental meet-cute, where two humans inadvertently fall in love and end up cheating on their AI partners. It sounds more sci-fi than reality, but then again, AI-human relationships have already crossed that threshold<\/a>.<\/p>\n All I know is that when I get home, I\u2019m giving my real, flesh-and-blood spouse a big fat hug.<\/p>\n Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Victoria SongClose Victoria Song<\/p>\n Senior Reviewer, Wearable Tech<\/p>\n Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n See All by Victoria Song<\/a><\/p>\n AIClose<\/p>\n AI<\/p>\n Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n See All AI<\/a><\/p>\n Hands-onClose<\/p>\n Hands-on<\/p>\n Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n See All Hands-on<\/a><\/p>\n ReportClose<\/p>\n Report<\/p>\n Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n See All Report<\/a><\/p>\n ReviewsClose<\/p>\n Reviews<\/p>\n Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n FollowFollow<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n