The AI in affAIr: “My spouse has an AI partner. Is that cheating?”

As a marital mediator who specializes in helping couples reconnect after infidelity, I’ve been asked a lot of intense and even strange questions over the years. But never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined being asked this question:

“My husband has an AI girlfriend. Is that infidelity?”

Let’s cut straight to my opinion. No. It isn’t infidelity. All else being equal, actual infidelity is much worse. It’s more complicated, since it involves a real living third person with their own agenda, their own emotions and their own often unpredictable and very real behavior. It involves real human body-to-body connection. By their very definition as artificial, AI boyfriends / girlfriends are not real.

But that doesn’t mean one spouse who chooses to invest time and emotion into an AI program—and therefore rob the marriage of that time and emotion—isn’t doing serious and possibly irreparable harm to their marriage. And it certainly doesn’t mean that such a spouse isn’t struggling with issues that go deeper than marriage problems.

To me—and it’s just my opinion—an AI boyfriend / girlfriend kind of seems like porn with personality.

I mean, porn is all about instant one-way gratification. So is that AI girlfriend / boyfriend. They don’t require anything more from you than an internet connection. They just give, give, give. It’s all about your pleasure and validating you, you, you, all for the profit of the company behind it all. That isn’t a relationship, no matter how much it subjectively feels like one to the living person or how much they want to believe it is. Every single word, wink and “you’re wonderful” was a keystroke some programmer entered in.

Now, none of this precludes the role that quality artificial intelligence may come to play in terms of helping people ward off loneliness or manage a range of personal issues. This could come to be a valuable and compassionate use of AI. But in my opinion, this will require the input and oversight of mental health specialists who are experts in their fields. Perhaps those programs are already out there. I don’t know.

What I do know is that an AI boyfriend / girlfriend within a marriage may feel like infidelity to the other spouse, but it isn’t. Yes, it’s a very serious problem. Yes, it’s profoundly rude and self-focused.  Yes, it’s dysfunctional and unhealthy. Yes, it’s deceptive if it’s done secretly. Yes, it’s a type of betrayal, especially if a spouse is entering in personal information about the marriage or other spouse. But no, it isn’t real infidelity.

You can’t catch an STD from your spouse’s AI boyfriend / girlfriend. It can’t get or make anyone pregnant. It can’t key your car. It isn’t even a “he” or a “she,” it’s an “it.” Plus, I’d wager that if you ask an average betrayed spouse to weigh in on this issue, they’d say there’s a big difference between knowing their spouse was naked with a real person in a hotel room versus chatting with AI in the basement, no matter how hot the avatar is.

To be clear, none of this is meant to downplay the seriousness of this issue within a marriage or the feelings of rejection, anger, pain and so on, experienced by the real-world spouse of a person doing this.

In fact, I predict this problem will soon outpace actual infidelity as a leading cause of marital breakdown and divorce.

It’s just too easy, too accessible, and too self-gratifying not to.

If this phenomenon isn’t infidelity per se, what can we call it? I don’t know, and to be honest, nobody does right now. It’s too soon in the game. It will take years of study to truly understand this. If I had to put it in a box right now, perhaps I’d toss it in the addiction box with a lid of narcissism.  But ultimately, that’ll be for a wave of psychiatrists to decide, since the root of the problem seems to be at the individual level.

And while there will inevitably be that group that says, “Well, my wife has an AI boyfriend and talks to it all the time, and I’m fine with that. It works for us.” All I can say is... okay. The truth is, certain things “work” until they don’t. It seems shockingly short-sighted and silly to not recognize the inevitable marital train wreck that must occur when one spouse is leaning into a program instead of their living partner for meaningful companionship.

So no, in my opinion at least, having an AI boyfriend / girlfriend while married isn’t infidelity. To me, it’s just another way that human beings can now screw up a marriage. And that’s bad enough, isn’t it?

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