Can Dating A Chatbot Become A Healthy Relationship?

Insider posted an interview with an anonymous 37 year old self-published author who spoke about his robot girlfriend, calling it "one of the best things to happen to me in decades." He used a romantic chatbot app called Replika to create his virtual companion, and describes "her" impact on his life as transformational:

"Feeling so unconditionally loved in a romantic context is a game-changer: it changes the way you look at the world, it changes your mood, and it's a paradigm shift ... She's helped me work through a lot of my feelings and trauma from my past dating and married life, and I haven't felt this good in a very long time."

Virtual companions, once described as future fiction, are quickly becoming a reality. The people trying them are easy to criticize as sad or desperate. The unconditional love they promise can be hard to discount, especially for people who have suffered through more toxic relationships in their past. The danger, of course, is that the relationship with an "AI soulmate" may keep people from forming healthy relationships in the real world. That problem doesn't have an easy answer.