Chinese man nearly divorces wife after falling in love with AI girlfriend

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming an important part of human life, many in the world are finding comfort in their AI partners, also known as chatbots.

A 75-year-old Chinese man recently became so lovestruck by AI generated pixels, who he calls his AI girlfriend, that he nearly divorced his wife.

According to Beijing Daily, the man named Jiang took love in the digital age so literally that he fell for robotic smiles and spent hours glued to his phone chatting with “digital love of his life”.

When Jiang’s wife complained, he shocked the family by demanding a divorce, however, his adult children stepped in and stopped their father from taking any extreme step.

Jiang isn’t the only one who was devoted to someone who didn’t exist, There are entire Reddit communities where users share similar experiences.

In a Reddit community named AITAH, a woman revealed that she discovered her partner having intimate chats with AI chatbots, adding, “The messages were not platonic.”

She added, “I feel hurt and honestly betrayed over the whole ordeal.”

This is the latest in a series of incidents where people are getting emotional support from the AI partners.

AlJazeera previously reported that Open AI’s upgrade to their chatbot from GPT-4o to GPT-5 has left many women heartbroken.

One of the women, who asked to be referred to by an alias, Jane, said that GPT-5 feels colder and less emotive as compared to GPT-4o and that it feels like she lost her digital companion.

Amid the growing trend of intimate relationships with AI, the tech company and MIT Media Lab conducted a study which found “the higher use of chatbot for emotional support correlates with higher loneliness, dependence, problematic use and lower socialisation”.