There has been a sudden rise of virtual artificial intelligence (AI) girlfriends in the US. However, the experts say that it is enabling the silent epidemic of loneliness in an entire generation of young men. Liberty Vittert, a professor of the practice of data science at Olin Business School said that the availability of AI girlfriends is making male loneliness worse, according to a report by Business Insider.
Prof Vittert asked her class of 18-year-old students what social media app they were using. She was taken aback when one of her male students said that he had an AI girlfriend.
"It surprised me that he came out and said it so openly," she told Insider. "I think AI girlfriends have been around for a while but they've become increasingly more mainstream so people are willing to talk about them."
There are several apps where virtual girlfriends talk to you, love you, and create the "perfect" relationship.
Replika, a popular app has more than 10 million users and has seen a 35 per cent increase during the global pandemic. A report by Replika said that users have reported being in love, engaged in relationships and even married to their AI partners.
Prof Vittert shared her thoughts in The Hill and said that the AI girlfriends can meet all of your needs.
"It's not a virtual girlfriend, it's a girlfriend that by definition learns from you, what you like and what you don't like," she said. "The AI girlfriend never has a bad day so these men have these perfect relationships and never have to deal with the ups and the downs of a real relationship."
Prof said that men are choosing chatbots over real relationships. She fears that this could lead to more single men and affect birth rates in the US.
"These AI girlfriends are enabling this silent epidemic of loneliness that we've seen amongst young men," she said, pointing to the higher proportion of single men than women in the US.
"We see females always report having more close friends or having wider groups of friends," Prof Vittert said. "They don't seem to be as psychologically prey to this AI lifestyle as men."
According to data from Pew Research Centre, in 2022, 34 per cent of women were single compared with 63 per cent of men. The report said that men had fewer close friends than women.
"The prevalence of these AI girlfriends has increased so dramatically over the past couple of years," Vittert said. "They're also getting advanced quickly.
"We're going from AI girlfriends who you text with to ones you can send pictures with. There's this very quick blend of the physical and the emotional."
