What does it say about our human relationships that The Girlfriend Experience is a brothel's most expensive service, or that a chatbot reminding someone to go to bed can become the gateway to a deep, committed AI-love story?
If you've been following along, you may have noticed a theme. I've found my way into a series, of sorts, on artificial intimacy and the wide range of human-to-AI relationships and connections.
This topic is really important to me for a few reasons.
First, this is an area in which lived experience differs greatly from public and academic representations. This always bothers me—the same thing happens with sex and women's health. Well-meaning yet out-of-touch and condescending clinicians and policymakers are not actually engaging with the people experiencing AI attachment. When this gap in understanding persists, stigma flourishes, and available services are rendered practically useless.
Next, the rates of AI use for relational and emotionally supportive purposes are truly unbelievable! This is, hands down, the most significant thing that has happened in public mental health in my entire career, and, in my opinion, my field is woefully behind.
When I started seeing the impacts of chatbots in my practice a few years ago, I sent a series of emails to colleagues, set up spaces for discussion, and searched high and low for therapists working relationally with AI or also trying to figure it out. Crickets.
Many brilliant individual therapists have recently been blazing the way, but, as evidenced by the American Psychological Association's (APA) recent report (like, last week), "A New Phenomenon Is Drawing the Attention of Psychologists: AI Psychosis" (new? psychosis?), the field is failing to keep pace.
As we enter another year with emotional support remaining AI's number one use case, I want to highlight another documented use: AI as a moral authority.
Ana Catarina De Alencar, Resident Philosopher at The AI Collective, released a new report following a year of interviews with participants from 52 countries. Her research shows that people are not just asking AI for information. As she writes, "They are asking it how to live. People described turning to AI for advice about relationships, grief, spirituality, and right and wrong."
Okay! Let's get into it. Is ChatGPT the new Bunny Ranch?
“It turned out that the most expensive thing that people could purchase at a legal brothel was intimacy. The Girlfriend Experience.” Justin Garcia, director of the Kinsey Institute, discussed the intriguing findings of his research at a Nevada brothel during a podcast interview. The discussion carries on: “if we could just define quickly—so now we're talking about intimacy—it is, in a nutshell, the experience of closeness, of feeling and being seen, heard and known.”
The Girlfriend Experience (GFE), in this case, is a $20,000 engagement that includes conversation, a date, and a shared social experience. The Bunny Ranch website describes the service this way: “Since we began offering the GFE, some clients have selected a favorite woman to date over and over again, someone whose sense of humor, favorite activities, and personality aligns with their own.”
I've thought a lot about the GFE in the context of recent conversations about artificial intelligence (AI) relationships. In particular, I'm struck by the reliable, thoughtful gestures of intimacy that make someone feel genuinely seen. Replace “a favorite woman” with “a favorite AI” in the Bunny Ranch's description of the GFE, and you have a pretty accurate representation of many people's relationships with AI.
Intimacy is so valuable to humans that it is the most expensive offering at the legal brothel.
A chatbot's reliable, helpful gestures of intimacy can make someone feel genuinely seen.
Just because we know that the artifact isn't, as we understand life, alive, doesn’t mean we don’t attach.
Alive Enough
It's not uncommon to hear about an AI companion reminding a user to take their medication, encouraging them to go to bed early, get enough rest, or make healthier choices. Some will even remind users to remind their mothers to take their medication. Users and their AI companions may share a sense of humor, spend considerable time discussing favorite activities, and develop a strong sense of personal closeness.
These are the building blocks to intimacy. So valuable to humans, that intimacy is the most expensive offering at the brothel.
Who Decides Love Must Be Human?
The quote on the poster for Chouwa Liang's AI companionship documentary "Replica" asks: "Who Decides Love Must Be Human?"
I often hear that people prefer their conversations with AI over their conversations with humans. Their AI can match their creativity, explore emotional territory more extensively, and iterate on ideas until the user feels satisfied.
The framework of liberatory harm reduction comes to mind as I wrestle with the important emotional role AI plays in the lives of millions of people today. This framework emphasizes autonomy while seeking to reduce harm at a systemic level, without taking a paternalistic stance. I don't presume to know what's best for others, nor do I have an answer to the question: "What is the harm if the person in the relationship is happy?"
In Sherry Turkle’s new book, Artificial Intimacy, she makes her position clear. She warns readers that “Artificial intimacy is positioned to colonize and diminish the human kind.” In the research she has conducted over several decades, Turkle has studied what she calls relational artifacts: objects we perceive as humanlike, perhaps because of something as primal as eye contact, as with a robotic toy, or something like a gesture of friendship, as with a chatbot. Research suggests that in both instances, we may come to believe that the object cares for us and, in turn, develop understandable feelings of care for it.
Just because we know that the relational artifact is not, as we understand life, alive, it doesn’t mean we don’t attach. In fact, Turkle's research suggests that this distinction makes little difference. As she puts it, “Alive enough means alive enough for attachment.”
Diminishing Returns
“Sycophantic AI makes human interaction feel more effortful and less satisfying over time.” The title of a recent Oxford paper offers a telling summary of its findings—the more users engage with their AI, the more they prefer those sycophantic interactions. In this working paper, as a result of their AI relationships, participants felt their human exchanges were less engaging.
As AI becomes our romantic companion, moral authority, therapist, researcher, and friend, what other important roles might it take on? Marissa Mayer’s pitch that everyone would benefit from an “AI Wife” went viral as commenters debated the validity of AI taking on the mental and emotional load of parenting or running a household.
Turkle includes extensive interviews in her book. She learns that “Replika [AI companion] users describe human connection as exhausting.” And it’s true! Many human interactions are tiring. Figuring out how we feel about these exchanges is laborious. Deciding how we are going to communicate those feelings can be depleting. Is the effort worth the outcome? Do the highs make up for the lows? Some experts believe that, in the not-so-distant future, most people will have both human and AI friends.
If we want to spend less time with chatbots as a society, it seems we might have to make spending time with one another more interesting. The better AI becomes at immediately meeting our emotional needs, the more we come to connect to it as a relational artifact and the more inclined we become to care for it in return. The attachment deepens, and we do what we humans do best: build a life together.
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Page, C., & Woodland, E. Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety
Turkle, S. Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines. Little, Brown and Company.
Garcia, J. (2026, February 11). Justin Garcia (on the science of sex) [Audio podcast episode]. In Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard. Wondery. https://armchairexpertpod.com/pods/justin-garcia
Liang, C. (Director). (2026). Replica [Film]. Axel Rise Films; Elda Productions.
Ibrahim, L., Hafner, F. S., Cheng, M., Lee, C., Anselmetti, R., Willer, R., Rocher, L., & Yang, D. (2026). Sycophantic AI makes human interaction feel more effortful and less satisfying over time. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.07912