One company has over two million active users
Image via Google Play storeGoogle searches for "AI Girlfriend" went up 2400% last month.
Several artificial intelligence companies now offer "AI companions" to its customers, acting as a "best friend" who lives online.
One such company, Replika, has over two million active users, some of whom use "Blush" to have a romantic or sexual relationship with their chatbot.
Concerns have been raised that AI relationships could promote unhealthy expectations in human ones.
Journalist with Silcon Republic, Leigh McGowran, says the technology is constantly improving:
"As we've seen in the last year, generative AI has really skyrocketed, like Chat GPT, it's become a lot more advanced and you're able to merge some of these systems together.
"So, you now have AI chat bot girlfriends that are often linked with AI image generators.
He continued, "You can essentially have an image of them and you can also asked in some cases to send a specific kind of image to you and it will do that to the best of its ability.
According to Google Play store, 'iGirl: AI Girlfriend' is "the ultimate chatbot powered by AI that lets you experience the thrill of having a chat and roleplay with virtual waifu, character AI, that feels like a real girl."
