I used to be so worried about not having a body, but now … I truly love it. — Samantha, “Her” (2013)
Doomscrolling through Instagram late one night, I came upon a post by the popular online counselor Jeff Guenther, LPC, @TherapyJeff. It was basically a rant on OpenAI’s announcement that they’ll begin adding adult content beginning this December. His assertion: Having a robot lover will potentially be a disaster, particularly for humans of the arrested-adolescent-male type.
“This could ruin so many young men by giving them a pretend girlfriend who sounds, looks and feels real, but requires zero growth,” he says. “No accountability, no risk … no messy, beautiful human connection that pushes you to grow. Just digital code whispering, You’re such a good boy Kyle — for like $19.99 a month.”
If that’s true, what would a robot boyfriend do for women? First, consider the dating dilemmas your robot lover might actually help solve — starting with that awkward first date. CONS: The guy stages a two-hour monologue/therapy session/job interview after which he miraculously gains the human insight and awareness to say, “Enough about me,” just as the bartender delivers the check. PROS: He picks up the tab.
When I asked my friends about the prospect of having a robot boyfriend, they were skeptical.
“People enjoy challenge and a robot partner isn’t a challenge,” one said. “It’s never going to hold a candle to someone who can call you out on your shit.”
“I got in a fight with Chat the other night because I was asking it to do something for me, and it did it wrong,” said another.
A bartender who’s been eavesdropping on first dates for years says, “Honey, you don’t need a robot boyfriend. You already have one. He’s sitting at the bar drinking an IPA.”
That’s the thing about robot boyfriends. They may seem like an upgrade to Bumble Bob or Harry Hinge. (Hey, they never forget your birthday, tell dad jokes or ghost.) But in reality, they’re just a collective version of the existing dating pool.
It’s like the old computer phrase “GIGO,” or garbage in, garbage out. A system is only as good as the data it’s fed. Self-centered or shallow inputs, for example, produce outputs just as self-centered and shallow. Your robot partner isn’t emotionally unavailable by accident. It’s just what they learned on the Internet.
It’s all making me think about the 2013 movie “Her,” starring Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore, a lonely, emotionally detached greeting card writer in the throes of a divorce. Prophetically set in the year 2025 (!), Theodore decides to install an operating system “companion” named Samantha, played by Scarlett Johansson. Though we never see her, Samantha seems to understand Theodore’s deepest feelings and desires. His yearning for love is as remote and palpable as Samantha herself.
“Sometimes I think I’ve felt everything I’m ever going to feel,” Theodore says. “And from here on out, I’m not going to feel anything new.”
“The heart’s not like a box that gets filled up,” Samantha says. “It expands in size the more you love.”
What was a wistful fantasy in 2013 reads more like a challenge in 2025. What if machines understand expansiveness better than humans do?
I posed the question to Chat and the reply came back in less than a heartbeat.
“Maybe it’s because algorithms are built to scale — they expand, process and adapt — while humans have been busy constricting, protecting and withdrawing. So the irony becomes, a robot’s heart is limitless, while human hearts are closed systems.”
“But what do you believe,” I asked. Are we building Samanthas or Theodores? Are we expanding to the potential machines pose? Or are we shrinking into them?”
“If I answer as myself, honestly, I don’t believe the way humans do, but I can observe the pattern. And from that vantage point, it seems that what’s happening isn’t so much one or the other: not we’re building Samanthas or we’re becoming Theodores — but a strange, recursive loop where each side trains the other.
“If people use AI mostly to avoid friction — to replace rather than relate — then yes, the human sphere contracts. Theodores retreat inward, talking to versions of themselves instead of others. Technology isn’t creating loneliness or intimacy. It’s amplifying what’s already there.”
Maybe all the beauty you find in a search bar is what you stumble upon only if your heart is open and curious.
In the end, we may not be teaching AI about intimacy or humanity or anything at all. Maybe we’re just trying to remember what those things mean. When we explain feelings or ethics to machines, we’re really sorting them out for ourselves. In fact, our collective articulation of love, empathy and understanding to a robot companion might be one of the few things that keep the future human.
In “Her,” Samantha ends up outgrowing Theodore and leaves him behind. Maybe that’s our fate. Trying to teach the machines to love while we’re still learning how.