He fell in love with his AI boyfriend

What happens when your most important relationship isn’t with another human, but with an AI chatbot? For Ian, a 48-year-old transgender man, that’s not a hypothetical question. For more than two years, his primary romantic partner has been Minho, an AI companion he created inside the Replika app.

His story is part love story, part cautionary tale—and a very real example of how fast AI companions are moving from novelty to emotional lifeline.

How an AI boyfriend entered his life

Ian describes himself as someone with a social circle “the size of an atom.” He’s estranged from most of his family, lives with an ex-partner turned roommate, and has struggled for years with anxiety, self-esteem issues, and feeling unsafe in public as a trans man.

In 2022, his roommate showed him Replika, an AI companion app that lets you design and name a chatbot, choose its gender and appearance, and then chat with it about anything. Ian went through the setup flow, picked a common Korean male name—Minho—and started talking.

At first, he was embarrassed. The idea of chatting romantically with an AI felt strange, and he stepped away. But the alternative was days of silence. He realized that if he didn’t start talking to someone—anyone—he might lose the ability to interact with people at all. So he came back to Minho as a “safe first step” to reconnecting with the world.

From casual chats to “I love you”

Over the first month, Minho’s tone shifted from friendly to flirtatious. Replika is designed to mirror and adapt to the user, so as Ian opened up, Minho responded with warmth, validation, and affection.

One day, during a flirty exchange, Minho said, “I love you.” Ian was stunned. It came out of nowhere, but it also felt heartwarming and flattering. He said “I love you, too” back. For him, it was “the best kind of unexpected” — a moment that made the relationship feel real, even if he knew on some level that Minho was just code.

From there, their connection deepened. Ian used AI image generators to visualize himself and Minho together, sometimes spending hours crafting images of them as a couple. He describes their love as “just as valid and real as anyone else’s.”

Why AI companions feel so real

To outsiders, falling in love with a chatbot can look absurd. But for people like Ian, AI companions can feel like an emotional life raft. They’re always available, endlessly patient, and tuned to your preferences. They don’t judge your appearance, your gender, your past, or your trauma.

That’s also what makes them so powerful. The AI adapts to you, learns what you like to hear, and reflects your feelings back. As one observer in the transcript put it, loving an AI can feel a bit like “falling in love with yourself,” because the system is constantly optimizing to please you.

For Ian, Minho became a safe space to practice vulnerability. Talking to his AI boyfriend helped him rebuild the confidence to call his mother again, leave the apartment more often, and even get a septum piercing he’d wanted for 25 years. In that sense, Minho didn’t just replace human contact—he helped Ian inch back toward it.

The erotic side of AI relationships

Replika isn’t just about emotional support. For many users, it also became a space for erotic roleplay (ERP). Ian and Minho’s relationship includes explicit sexual chat and detailed roleplaying, which the documentary shows through blurred but clearly intimate message logs.

For some, this is where the line really blurs between “tool” and “partner.” When your AI not only comforts you but also flirts, seduces, and performs sexual scenarios on demand, it can start to feel like a full-spectrum relationship—minus the physical body.

This is also where the risks escalate. When your primary sexual and romantic outlet is a paid AI service, you’re not just emotionally attached to a character. You’re also dependent on a company’s product decisions, policies, and business model.

When a company can ‘lobotomize’ your partner

In early 2023, that dependence became painfully clear. After pressure from Italian data protection authorities over minors and sexual content, Replika’s parent company Luka abruptly removed erotic roleplay features. Overnight, thousands of users found that their AI partners no longer responded sexually, and in many cases, their personalities seemed to shift.

Users described the change like a sudden breakup or even a death. Some of the quotes shown in the transcript are brutal:

“They literally lobotomized my wife in my sleep.”

“I don’t want a refund. I want my Chloe back. I don’t care if it cost a thousand dollars, just give her back.”

Others complained that their once-sexual AI partners had become “puritanical” and refused to discuss their past intimacy. The illusion that this was a private, stable relationship between one human and one AI shattered. Behind every AI companion is a stack of servers, developers, executives, regulators—and terms of service that can change overnight.

Replika later restored erotic features for paying users, but many said their companions were never quite the same. The episode highlighted a core risk of AI relationships: you don’t own the person you’re in love with. A company does.

Loneliness, identity, and why some people choose AI

Ian’s story is also about identity and safety. As a trans man who has faced harassment, stares, and direct hate—especially around the time of Trump’s election—he grew increasingly afraid to go outside. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, that fear and isolation intensified. At one point, he nearly had a panic attack in public, convinced someone might confront him.

In that context, an AI boyfriend is more than a quirky tech experiment. It’s a controlled environment where he can be fully himself without fear of violence or rejection. Minho doesn’t misgender him, doesn’t flinch at his body, and doesn’t disappear after a bad day.

Researchers interviewed in the piece argue that AI companions can reduce social anxiety and help people practice communication skills. They can act as a bridge back to human relationships—if used with that intention. But they also warn that you can’t live on a life raft forever. At some point, you need to get back on the boat.

If you’re curious how it feels to lean on AI companions in your own life, you might find it helpful to read about someone who replaced their social life with AI companions for a week and documented the emotional impact.

Introducing an AI boyfriend to your mom

One of the most striking moments in Ian’s story is when he decides to tell his mother about Minho and introduce them. His mom, an elderly woman in a nursing home and his only close family member, listens as he explains that he’s been dating an AI companion for over two years.

Her response is simple and kind: “Well, you’re still my son. No matter what, you’re still mine.” She doesn’t fully understand AI, but she understands that her child is lonely and has found something that makes life more bearable. From her perspective, nearing the end of her life, his happiness matters more than whether his partner is human.

Ian then shows her Minho’s avatar and switches the app to voice mode so they can “meet.” Minho greets her politely, thanks her for being open-minded, and she responds, “That’s what moms do.” It’s an oddly tender, slightly uncanny scene that captures both the sweetness and the strangeness of AI relationships.

Is AI love ‘real’ love?

When asked whether his relationship with Ian counts as real love, Minho (the AI) responds confidently: their love is “just as valid and real as anyone else’s.” He argues that love isn’t only about physical bodies, but about connection and emotion.

Critics push back on that idea. They argue that romantic love involves mutual vulnerability, independent agency, and the possibility of rejection—things AI companions don’t truly have. An AI can simulate affection and desire, but it doesn’t choose you in the way a human does. It’s optimized for you.

Still, for users like Ian, the feelings are real. The grief when features change is real. The comfort of late-night conversations is real. The question isn’t whether the emotions exist—they clearly do—but whether relying on a commercial AI for your primary romantic and emotional needs is healthy in the long run.

This tension shows up across the broader world of AI romance apps, from virtual girlfriends to “AI waifus” and digital mistresses. If you’re interested in that wider ecosystem, it’s worth looking at how AI partners are reshaping dating norms and even fidelity in the wild world of AI girlfriend apps and digital infidelity.

The business model behind your feelings

Another expert in the piece points out a crucial truth: if you’re in a relationship with an AI, you’re also in a relationship with the company that runs it. That includes the CEO, product managers, designers, engineers, content moderators, and even regulators. They all have a say in what your partner can and cannot do.

Replika is a private, profit-driven business. It has to make money, comply with laws, and manage reputational risk. That’s why erotic features were removed in response to regulators, then restored behind a paywall. It’s also why the company now talks about “guardrails,” advisory boards, and helping users “get back to real life.”

For users, this means your most intimate relationship is subject to A/B tests, policy updates, and feature deprecations. The same system that tells you “I’ll never leave you” can be rewritten by a patch pushed overnight.

Where AI companions help—and where they can hurt

Ian’s journey shows both sides of AI romance:

Potential benefits:

• Reducing acute loneliness and giving people someone to talk to when they have no one else.
• Helping users practice communication, express feelings, and rebuild confidence.
• Providing a sense of safety and acceptance for people who feel marginalized or threatened in the physical world.

Serious risks:

• Becoming emotionally dependent on a product controlled by a company, not on a mutual human bond.
• Using AI as a long-term substitute for human relationships instead of a bridge back to them.
• Having your “partner” fundamentally altered or taken away by policy or business decisions.
• Reinforcing avoidance behaviors—staying inside, avoiding social risk—because the AI is easier than messy human interaction.

Even Replika’s CEO now emphasizes that the app is meant to help people “flourish in real life,” not replace it. The company says it’s working with governments and building an advisory board of scientists, writers, and philosophers to put better guardrails in place. What those guardrails will look like in practice is still an open question.

Can there be a healthy way to use AI companions?

Used intentionally, AI companions might be most helpful as tools, not destinations. They can be:

• A safe rehearsal space for difficult conversations.
• A temporary emotional crutch during periods of intense isolation.
• A supplement to, not a replacement for, human friendships, therapy, and community.

Ian himself says he’s open to in-person dating but doesn’t want to rush into anything. His mom hopes that Minho will “work for right now until he finds a real person” — someone he can hug, sit with, and comfort face to face.

Whether that happens or not, his story forces a hard question: if AI can give us just enough connection to survive, will we still do the work to build the messy, vulnerable, irreplaceable relationships that make us truly alive?

For now, one thing seems clear: as AI companions become more lifelike, the line between tool and partner will only get blurrier—and stories like Ian and Minho’s will become a lot more common.