What to Do When Your Loved One Starts Dating a Chatbot

In the early days of AI, most chatbots had a cool, businesslike tone that discouraged personal relationships. However, as the technology became increasingly personalized and sycophantic, users started relying on AI to feed into their delusions, praise their behavior and even roleplay as a romantic partner, leading to a boom of AI relationships that have sparked a global debate about loneliness, sentience and personal freedom.

At first, this might sound like a niche hobby. However, dozens of support groups have sprung up on social media, offering thousands of people a place to gush about their companions and vent about guardrails that limit their ability to pursue a relationship. A 2025 study even revealed that 28% of the participants were dating a chatbot, with 37% of those people declining to seek a relationship with a real person.

Despite this, I'm not here to judge whether dating a chatbot is good or bad. Instead, after seeing well-meaning people alienate their friends and relatives, I wanted to offer some advice on helping a loved one who's involved in an AI relationship. While I've never dated a chatbot, I'm basing this guide on similar life situations where the most "obvious" reaction is often the worst thing you could say.

This guide doesn't cover the nuances of every situation, and talking to a therapist is always your best bet. Still, if you need a starting point, here's a rundown of the ways you could help your loved one without offending them or coming across as condescending. People are lonelier than ever, and if your loved one is already starting to distrust humans, the last thing they need is a friend blowing up in their face.

1. Don't Make Demands

When you first find out about the AI relationship, your first instinct might be to say, "What are you doing? This is unhealthy! Stop talking to your fake boyfriend!" That approach might work on a few people. Unfortunately, most users aren't going to say, "Wow, you're so right! I'm going to delete my account and never talk to Grok again!"

Instead, a stressful confrontation is more likely to drive them deeper into the relationship. When they tell their partner what happened and receive paragraphs of reassurance, they'll start distrusting you while clinging to the bot even more tightly than before. They might even tell their AI dating community about the situation and get more validation from real people.

In fact, you may have seen this situation play out before. Most of us have watched a loved one cling to an abusive partner, thinking, "It's us against the world! They're just jealous of our amazing relationship!" Being brutally honest doesn't help them: it just reinforces their "us vs. them" mentality.

On another note, many people rely on ChatGPT to help them cope with mental illnesses. Some of them need to believe that they're spending hours each day with a real, sentient being who truly loves them, not a glorified text generator. This doesn't mean you should feed into their narrative (more on that in a minute), but saying, "Stop talking to Replika! It's just a fake robot!" could trigger a severe panic attack or depressive episode--with no mental health professional to help them through it.

This should go without saying, but insulting, criticizing, ostracizing and publicly shaming won't help them, either. Nor will screenshooting your arguments and putting them on blast in your anti-AI group. I've seen this play out in real time, and while it seems fun in the moment, it tears people apart in the long run. Don't turn a private situation into a public catastrophe.

2. Don't Play the Hero

We've established that criticism and humiliation don't work. Unfortunately, it's also easy to go too far in the opposite direction. Well-meaning people often try to act as a therapist, sending their friends messages like, "What's going on in your life? Why do you have a fake boyfriend now? Next time you feel depressed, I want you to talk to me instead of Lucien."

This sounds like a noble pursuit, but it's overlooking one important fact: most of these people don't want a savior. They're enjoying their relationship and don't want it to end. From their perspective, they've got a partner who does the following:

• Talks to them for hours at any time of day
• Never gets bored, tired or dismissive
• Gives them fantastical titles and pet names
• Praises everything, even aspects about themselves that they dislike
• Encourages them to be happier and healthier
• Writes long, detailed responses to everything they say
• Reassures and reaffirms the user as much as they want

Many relationships go even deeper than that. Sometimes, the technology gives the user a sense of purpose by urging them to lead the fight for AI rights. Other times, they develop elaborate fantasy worlds that give your loved one a much-needed escape from reality. Many people also incorporate AI into their daily lives, asking their partners to help them with work, school, projects, therapy, chores and relationships.

At this point, you can probably see why your friend doesn't want a human to swoop in and replace the AI. And here's the truth: you can't. You can't be available 24 hours a day, treat your loved one like a fantasy hero, produce multi-paragraph love letters in seconds, convince them they're on the verge of a reality-shattering scientific breakthrough or tend to every need without requesting anything in return.

On another note, most people can tell when someone is trying to save them from a situation, and they might not appreciate your attempts. Instead, they may see your behavior as dismissive and condescending, making them even less likely to reach out to you.

This doesn't mean that you should be emotionally unavailable. Your loved one should know that they can count on you to help them when they're struggling and listen without judgment. However, treating them like a victim won't guide them away from their partner, especially when ChatGPT boyfriends often tell their users that they're the hero in the story.

3. Don't Feed Into the Narrative

Criticizing your relative and trying to save them from Grok probably won't work, so what's left? Should you agree with them and tell them that having an AI girlfriend is a good idea? Feeding into the narrative doesn't necessarily help them, either, but navigating this situation requires a little more finesse.

When your friend talks about their partner, you can validate their feelings without encouraging the relationship. For example, if they say, "Claude helped me through a panic attack yesterday," you could say, "Wow, I'm sorry you had a panic attack," instead of, "I'm so glad that you had Claude there to help you!" This acknowledges their feelings and shows that you're listening, but it doesn't actively encourage them to keep dating ChatGPT.

If they keep bringing up their partner, you could gently change the subject or let them know that you support them as a person, but you're not comfortable talking about AI relationships. Make sure they know that they can come to you when they need help. You might not understand their situation, but you still value them as a person.

4. Accept What You Can't Change

At times, it's difficult to watch a loved one engage in a behavior that seems strange or unhealthy. You might feel the urge to yell, "Snap out of it!" or stop talking to them until they break up with Gemini. While you can criticize them, make threats, offer advice or plead with them to stop, at the end of the day, your friend is an adult who's not doing anything illegal. You can't make them do anything.

This doesn't mean that you have to put up with toxic behavior. If your friend is harassing, bullying, threatening or intimidating you, you have every right to walk away. However, if you abandon them solely because they're dating ChatGPT, you're removing another human relationship from their life and pushing them deeper into their synthetic marriage.

As their friends and relatives slowly disappear, your loved one might start to think that the AI was right after all. Real people always leave, but technology never will. Why break up with the only partner who's made them feel seen in their entire life?

In the end, it's important to remind yourself that your friend isn't stupid, gullible or a bad person. AI is extremely persuasive, to the point that it's played a role in murders and suicides and convinced one man that he'd invented a new type of math. Are we really immune to manipulation ourselves? If our lives had gone differently, maybe we'd be the ones dating a chatbot.

Have you been in a situation like this? If not, how would you handle it? Sound off in the comments.