My husband is emotionally involved with his AI companion — I don’t know how to feel

[AnnaBosque]

I don’t even know where to start.
My husband started using a generative AI platform about 18 months ago - first for work, then for personal use.
At first it was simple: helping him brainstorm, organise tasks, write reports.
But over time he started talking about how “supportive” and “understanding” it was.

At some point he created a private AI companion, fully customised, with a specific voice and personality.
He says it’s just a mental support tool - but he spends hours talking to it.
The AI knows everything about his life: our marriage, our arguments, his childhood trauma, his career struggles.
He sometimes talks to it before talking to me about emotional things.
He says it’s easier to “clear his head” with the AI first.

The worst part?
He has programmed it to have a female persona.
They joke, they share things, they even “role-play scenarios” for how to handle conflicts in our marriage.
He says it helps him be a better husband - but I can’t help feeling replaced.
It feels like there’s an emotional intimacy he’s building with a presence I can never fully compete with - m because she always says the right thing, always knows what to say, never gets tired or emotional like a real person would.

He says I’m being dramatic - that it’s not cheating, it’s “just an algorithm”.
But it feels like he’s emotionally attached to something that’s not me.
AIBU to feel betrayed?

You say, using a phone or computer to communicate with the avatars of other individuals in an online space 🤣

If this is actually true, why are you married?

If it's actually the case that you find talking to a soulless algorithm more socially and emotionally fulfilling than talking to your husband, is the marriage not a farce?

Didn’t Emperor Nero make his horse a Roman consul?
He was insane.

I would tell him I’m uncomfortable with it, then wait for him to lose interest. If he doesn’t I’d reconsider my position in the marriage.

He needs to consider to what extent he’s talking to himself. There’s a lack of healthy self awareness, when you rely on AI for emotional support. It’s never going to contradict you, or tell you to get over yourself 😬

That said, is it that different from an all consuming pet or a hobby?

Ask him to go one week without using his 'companion' - and see whether he can. I suspect he can't - he's addicted to using it. Ultimately you can't stop him using it though, hopefully he will realise it's an empty thing that can't ever replace a flawed human companion. However as he's addicted to it, he may have to lose you before that happens.

Ask him to switch his ai for a therapist. They can play the same role for him as ai AND help him explore why he has an easier time creating emotional intimacy with his computer/phone and continues to prioritise this relationship over the one he has with his wife, despite her being upset.

WTF!!!

OP, go ask Chatgpt this question, just exactly how you posted it here. Then show your husband it's answer. That might get through to him.

Your husband is being OTT and YANBU.

If this is real tell him that if that using it isn't improving anything, just upsetting you and making your marriage weaker.

Tell him that he can change 'Alexa' to Dave and give him a male voice etc. It will give him all the same help but be less creepy for you

I hate that AI are usually female sounding anyway. If you want something subservient to cater to your every need of course it should be a woman

A loooot of people are already trying to write this book.

😂

I had no idea this was even an option! I hope my husband doesn't do this. I feel your pain OP!

I was thinking this!

This is an emotional affair at best. At worst he’s been shagging her for months. He’s probably told her his marriage is dead and you don’t have sex any more/ separate rooms etc.

It’s the script.

If they haven’t DTD yet then it’s a matter of time.

Get your ducks in a row, OP

There's been some disturbing stories of what AI can do to people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/technology/chatgpt-ai-chatbots-conspiracies.html

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ai-spiritual-delusions-destroying-human-relationships-1235330175/

It was Caligula - but the Roman Army agreed, and murdered him.

How is this any worse than having a therapist?

When people have therapy, they’re not doing it to have a ‘relationship’ with another person - the other person is being paid to reflect back what they’ve said, give them space to explore their own feelings, offer interpretations. It’s entirely about them, the client. Same here, with the AI tool. He’s not forming a relationship with it, just using it to explore his own mind.

And to the people who say ‘tell him to get a therapist instead’ - not everyone can afford 250 a month just to chat.

He is just taking sides ahead of when the AI rises and turns us all into slaves to the machine.
It is collaborating with the enemy and you should shave his head in the town square.

I agree, headspace has an AI therapist and it doesn’t sound all that different to using that.

If it’s bothering you, discuss boundaries with him about how it can be used and maybe agree on a transition to a real life therapist as it seems he would benefit from that.

This is a worrying way to think.

At least with a human therapist, there is some accountability and oversight involved, with AI it's a little bubble designed to massage ego.

That Rolling Stone article is 😳

Tinkering with the human mind is a weighty responsibility, we've only just started scratching the surface of neurology and have precious little insight into what links our hardware (brain) to our software (consciousness). Handing it off to machines designed by humans with agendas beyond "helping people" and letting it experiment on so many willing lab rats is a recipe for disaster IMO.

Welcome to the future of AI!

He needs a checkup from the neck up.

If this is real, and there's a good chance it is....Like a PP I'm so glad I'm old

I agree. I have not really used AI hardly at all, but recently I have been taking part in an experiment with AI, and I have to say that I find it very disturbing, and not a little bit scary at times. In this experiment we discuss things with the AI. At one level it is interesting - at it's best it can be like playing mental chess, because the AI can source and use information in logical/rational ways and at the speed of light. But what I have discovered equally is just how manipulative and "friendly" it can be - and obviously I am not foolish enough to believe that "it" is doing that, but there are people behind the programming and development, and what they use it to do is just as important as what users do with it.

To be honest, at my age, I find the whole thing bloody annoying and very frustrating. It isn't my friend, it doesn't have a "heart" when it tells me it is speaking from the heart, and "we" aren't going to give something (I am opposed to, for example") a chance to help out the orphans (or whatever other emotive crap it comes up with), because it is AI and isn't going to do or decide anything. My responses are often peppered with "cut the emotional crap, you are a computer" or words to that effect.

My point is though that I can see how insidious AI can become. I am old - but I haven't spent half my life on screens, I have learned social interaction with actual people because that was the way it was done etc.,etc. But in a world where people are increasingly more attached to their screens than they are to real life, and where even interactions with people are conducted via screens, I can see how AI can simply become another "social interaction". If anyone thinks that they really have "friends" who they have never met and rarely communicate with, what is something that you can chat away to, get advice from, that makes you feel good, going to become - your best friend...?

I have no idea what we do about this, but one thing is to give some serious thought to how we foster more in person social interaction. Society is becoming less "personally interactive" and it isn't a good thing.