Two years ago, I was having dinner with my girlfriends at Aldo's in Richmond when one of them made a confession.
She was worried she might be falling for “Hey Google.”
Every morning she greeted it. Every night she bid it goodnight and found comfort and contentment in the responses Google gave her.
At the time, it was the sort of confession that brought laughter around the dinner table, a harmless little attachment to a helpful voice in the house.
Now things have become a lot hotter...
Artificial intelligence is no longer confined to answering questions, setting alarms or telling you tomorrow's weather. AI companions can now flirt, provide emotional intimacy, remember personal details and engage in romantic and sexual conversations.
And that raises a distinctly modern relationship question:
If you fall for an AI companion while you're already in a relationship, are you cheating?
Your AI partner is always available. They listen without interrupting, remember what you tell them, offer emotional support whenever you need it and rarely arrive home tired, distracted or in a bad mood.
There is only one complication.
They are not human.
Artificial intelligence is moving beyond answering questions, writing emails and helping with work. Increasingly, people are using AI companions for friendship, emotional intimacy, romance and even sexual relationships.
And there is no simple answer to whether that constitutes infidelity.
Research suggests people are already sharply divided over the issue, while relationship experts say the answer may ultimately depend on what each couple has agreed constitutes fidelity.
AI companion programs such as Replika and Character.AI are designed to engage users in human-like conversations and can be personalised around an individual's interests, preferences and emotional needs.
Unlike human relationships, the AI companion does not become tired, need time alone or arrive with its own problems to discuss.
For some users, that can be enormously appealing.
University of Sydney researcher Raffaele Ciriello, who studies AI companions and digital relationships, says research indicates that about half the people involved with an AI companion are also in a relationship with a human partner.
That means AI companionship is not necessarily replacing human relationships.
Sometimes it exists alongside them.
The technology can provide emotional support and, for some users, romantic or sexual interaction.
Its constant availability and ability to adapt to the person using it may create a strong sense of being understood.
Sexologist and couples therapist Isiah McKimmie says part of the attraction is straightforward: an AI companion can provide attention and emotional support without requiring the reciprocal effort demanded by another human being.
Real partners have their own worries, exhaustion, work pressures and emotional needs.
AI does not, at least not in the human sense.
That potentially creates an unusual relationship dynamic: all the attention without the washing up.
Half would call it cheating
The issue becomes more complicated when a human partner does not know the AI relationship exists.
Canadian research involving 1,815 people found about half regarded a partner having a romantic AI companion as a form of infidelity.
Reactions were reportedly comparable with people's attitudes towards partners using dating apps or engaging in webcam relationships with other humans, and were more negative than reactions to sexual technologies such as pornography or sex toys.
Perhaps more tellingly, almost two-thirds of people using romantic AI companions said they kept that use secret from their partner.
That secrecy may be important.
For many couples, cheating is not defined simply by whether physical contact with another human has taken place.
It can also involve secrecy, emotional intimacy, sexual behaviour or the diversion of attention and affection away from the relationship.
Australian data remains limited, but YouGov research has found one in seven Australians could imagine themselves falling in love with an AI tool.
Among Generation Z respondents, that increased to 28 per cent.
Those figures suggest today's theoretical argument could become a very ordinary relationship conversation in the years ahead.
When does a chatbot become the other woman or man?
There is a significant difference between asking an AI system for a dinner recipe and telling an AI companion things you no longer tell your spouse.
The boundary is likely to be different for every relationship.
Some couples consider pornography a breach of trust. Others regard it as unremarkable. The same already applies to flirting, messaging former partners, friendships and social media.
AI introduces another category.
Would you mind your partner talking to an AI every evening?
What if they had given it a name?
What if the conversations became romantic?
What if they involved simulated sex?
What if your partner said “I love you” to it?
And perhaps the most revealing question: would they be comfortable showing you the conversations?
It is difficult to dismiss an AI relationship as “not real” if the emotions being experienced by the human participant are very real.
The AI may not experience love, jealousy or desire in the way a human does, but the person sitting on the other side of the screen can.
There is another person in the conversation
AI companionship also raises a privacy issue that ordinary sexual technologies generally do not.
An intimate relationship with an AI depends heavily upon disclosure.
People may tell the system about their fears, sexuality, marriage, arguments, family problems and intimate details about their partner.
Dr Ciriello points out that this can mean information about someone who never agreed to participate is being disclosed to the AI system.
A person's husband, wife or partner may therefore become part of an intimate digital conversation without knowing it.
That creates questions not only about fidelity but consent and privacy.
Your partner may be comfortable with you discussing an argument with a close friend.
They may feel differently if years of intimate information about them are being entered into an AI platform.
The Hawkesbury household conversation of the future
It may sound futuristic, but AI has moved remarkably quickly into ordinary life.
It is helping people write documents, study, program computers, answer questions and make decisions.
The next stage may be far more personal.
People will increasingly have to decide whether artificial companionship occupies the same emotional territory as friendship, pornography, fantasy, therapy — or an affair.
The technology cannot make that decision for them.
McKimmie argues couples will need to talk openly about what they regard as acceptable and establish boundaries together.
That remains a strikingly human solution to a distinctly technological problem.
After all, couples have always had to negotiate trust.
The questions are simply changing.
Once it might have been: Who were you talking to at the pub?
Then it became: Who are you messaging?
Soon it may be: Who's the chatbot and why have you been talking to it until two in the morning?
This article draws in part on reporting by Kellie Scott for ABC Lifestyle.
