Rome, Italy, Oct 22, 2025 / 06:00 am
As world leaders raise concerns about widespread loneliness and declining social skills, tech companies are offering increasingly realistic and immersive forms of AI-based life coaching, friendship, and romance through AI companions.
Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg suggests that AI companions could supplement the lack of human friends ; X’s Elon Musk thinks romantic and sexually-charged AI companions could mitigate demographic decline ; and OpenAI’s Sam Altman promises that ChatGPT will provide erotica by the end of 2025 .
AI-simulated emotional connections are already embedded into children’s toys , wearable pendants , and elderly care bots . Further advances in humanoid robots are on the horizon.
Simulating emotional intimacy
Currently, mo