AI Companions Offer Comfort, But Risk Deepening Loneliness
(ANALYSIS) Over and over, the Instagram, YouTube and Facebook algorithms tell young men they have digital ways to deal with loneliness, anxiety, depression and failure to find love.
Consider this chatbot promise: “The AI Girlfriend Who Actually Texts You Back. Flirty, jealous, sweet, a little bit dirty when she wants to be. GirlfriendGPT remembers every conversation, sends you selfies, and is online whenever you need her.”
Pope Leo XIV warned, on the 60th World Day of Social Communications, that chatbots are “capable of imitating human feelings and thus simulating a relationship. ... The power of simulation is such that AI can even deceive us by fabricating parallel ‘realities,’ usurping our faces and voices. We are immersed in a world of multidimensionality where it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish reality from fiction.”
Thus, a 2025 Vantage Point Counseling Services study found that 28% of adults say they have had an intimate AI interaction or relationship. The same study said 54% of Americans mentioned AI friends, colleagues or confidants.
Some romance chatbot statistics “seem high,” but not when linked to the “numbers you would find of Americans viewing pornography, because those two things are obviously connected and will become more connected in the future,” said Collin Hansen, editor of The Gospel Coalition website.
While AI “girlfriends” make news, it's important to see trends relevant to religious groups and other communities, he said, reached by telephone. The key is that these platforms can offer realistic voices and faces. “It did not have to be that way. It did not have to be designed to relate to you as if it's a person. That's a choice the designers made.”
In a recent meeting, Hansen asked church leaders to list the most popular uses of artificial intelligence. They were shocked to learn that, according to the Harvard Business Review, the “therapy-companionship” category was No. 1 in 2025 and again in 2026.
“Maybe OpenAI isn't valued at nearly $1 trillion just because it's making your work more efficient. Maybe someone knew that were AI going to take off, it would need to take on a human face,” wrote Hansen, in his essay, “Why Humans Pretend to Be Computers.”
Thus, Big Tech says these AI agents are able to “become a friend who shares jokes and silly pictures. To become an imaginative storyteller. To become a trusty counselor to assess your new relationship. To become a medium who can predict your future. To become a wise confidant who promises not to lead (you) astray (and never tells you what you don't want to hear).”
Many leaders of congregations and ministries are already trying to use AI agents to make their work easier.
In one famous case, a Catholic network produced an AI character called “Father Justin.” It was shut down when, interacting with a user, it crossed a sacramental line and said: “God is merciful and loving, my child. ... For your penance, I ask you to pray the Our Father three times, reflecting on God’s infinite mercy and love. And now, I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
Clergy are going to be tempted to believe that faith-based chatbots are inevitable, said Hansen in the interview. After all, if the online world has created feelings of isolation, depression, anxiety and loneliness, then AI experts will argue that users will need AI-driven platforms to help them cope with those issues.
In youth ministry, for example, pastors "would be saying that you have to do these things because the students, the young people, no longer know how to deal with other human beings," he said. “It would be easier for them to engage with an AI pastor or an AI teacher or an AI counselor because that is what they are used to doing. You don't want to make them go through the awkwardness of having to engage with a person, because they no longer have experience doing that.
“That, of course, is the problem. ... It could be that the student, that the young person, actually needs to learn how to engage with another person. The friction of needing to learn how to do that is part of the growth process. The human interaction is what is needed.”
Next week: Can AI agents learn to preach?
COPYRIGHT 2026 ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION
Terry Mattingly lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media. He is a retired mass media professor at Milligan University.