AI Girlfriend Statistics: The Numbers Worth Citing, and the Ones to Doubt

Key stats at a glance

Most AI girlfriend statistics floating around are either vendor marketing or a survey answer to a slightly different question. The table below sticks to figures with a named source and a stated sample. Where sources disagree, we say so.

Statistic	Figure	Source
US adults who have chatted with an AI romantic partner	19%	Wheatley/IFS 2025
Men vs women aged 18–30 who have chatted with an AI partner	31% vs 23%	Wheatley/IFS 2025
US singles who used AI as a romantic companion	16% (Gen Z 33%)	Match Singles in America 2025
US teens aged 13–17 who used a companion app	72% (13% daily)	Common Sense Media 2025
Male share on UK mixed-use platforms	77%	Ada Lovelace Institute 2025
Monthly searches for "ai girlfriend"	~93,000 US, 253,000 worldwide	Ahrefs, September 2026

Read the 19% figure carefully. It counts people who have ever chatted with an AI romantic partner, not people with an ongoing relationship with one. Someone who tried a companion bot once in 2024 counts the same as someone who talks to one nightly.

US usage statistics

The Wheatley Institute and Institute for Family Studies survey is the most cited adult figure, drawn from roughly 3,000 respondents. It puts 19% of US adults at having chatted with an AI romantic partner. Split by gender, 15% of all adult men and 10% of all adult women said they had.

Match's Singles in America 2025, with 5,001 participants, found 16% of singles had used AI as a romantic companion. By generation the range is wide: 33% of Gen Z and 23% of Millennials. The same research found 26% of singles use AI to enhance their dating life, up from 6% — a 333% rise.

A third set of numbers comes from the Imagining the Digital Future Center at BYU: 27–31% of US adults who use the internet use large language models for social or emotional interaction. That is a broader question than "do you have an AI girlfriend" — it includes people venting to a general assistant — which is why it runs higher. A separate 2026 figure puts about 31% of AI users describing a chatbot as a friend.

Then there are the vendor numbers. aigirlfriends.ai claims almost 45% of US men aged 18–34 have tried an AI girlfriend app. No method is published. Treat it as a marketing line rather than a statistic.

Platform user counts are mostly company claims with unclear counting. Reported figures include Character.AI at about 20 million monthly users (Sacra), Joi at about 6.5 million monthly users (Ofcom), SpicyChat at 100 million registered accounts, and Janitor AI at 2.5 million daily users. Registered accounts and monthly actives are not the same thing, and none of these are independently audited.

Demographics: who actually uses these apps

Gender

On adult-oriented companion platforms, the audience is heavily male. The Ada Lovelace Institute put UK mixed-use platforms at 77% male. Similarweb traffic panels show a similar pattern across the big names.

Platform	Male share	Source
Candy.ai	83%	Similarweb
Joi	80%	Similarweb
OurDream	79.6%	Similarweb
CrushOn	77%	Similarweb
SpicyChat	75%	Similarweb
Janitor AI	62.7% male, 37.3% female	Similarweb

Across romantic AI use generally, estimates land around 75–80% male. ChinaTalk puts the US male-to-female ratio at roughly 7:3, and 8:2 among 18–24s. The Independent, drawing on Skim AI, reports men are more than twice as likely to consider an AI partner.

Two contradictions are worth knowing. Janitor AI itself claims 70–80% of its users are women, which conflicts directly with panel data — a reminder that self-reported platform demographics are unverified. DemandSage reports Character.AI's audience as close to even. Character.AI is a general character-chat platform, not a girlfriend app, which explains part of the gap.

Naming is gendered too. Appfigures found 17% of apps in the category are named "girlfriend" against 4% "boyfriend".

Motivation differs by gender as well. Wheatley reports 17% of young women who use these tools chat for arousal, against 32% of young men.

Age

Age estimates are a mess. Here are the competing claims side by side.

Claim	Source
18–24s are over 65% of global users	Statista via Google AI Mode
Nearly 90% of users are under 35	Simon Lermen
About 41% of active users are 35 or older	aigirlfriends.ai, Grand View Research
18–24s are about 39% of users	Ada Lovelace Institute
Character.AI web audience 51.84% aged 18–24	DemandSage

These cannot all be right. They measure different things: global versus US, app versus web, companion apps versus general character chat. Any article quoting a single age figure without saying which population it covers is guessing.

Teens and restrictions

Common Sense Media surveyed 1,060 US teens aged 13–17 and found 72% had used an AI companion, 52% used one regularly and 13% daily. One third said they use companions for social interaction and relationships. The Center for Democracy and Technology found 19% of high schoolers had, or knew someone who had, an AI romantic relationship. AllAboutAI estimates up to 20% of teens and young adults spend time with AI in a way resembling human friendship.

Our focus is adult apps, which are 18+ only. Regulators are catching up on the younger end: California's SB 243 adds protections where a service knows a user is a minor, and similar laws in New York require disclosure and self-harm protocols. If you want the adult market specifically, teen figures belong in a separate paragraph, not blended into a headline number.

Search demand

Ahrefs puts "ai girlfriend" at about 93,000 US monthly searches and 253,000 worldwide as of September 2026. The US monthly average climbed from 3,425 in 2022 to 34,891 in 2023 and roughly 95,000 in 2026. Searches have held between about 85,000 and 99,000 a month since February 2026.

Related terms tell a story too. "ai companion" searches grew 53% over the past 12 months, and "ai boyfriend" hit an all-time high of about 9,000 monthly searches in September 2026. Interest peaks in December–January and June–July, which looks like holiday loneliness and summer boredom.

One widely repeated claim — a 525% one-year search increase from Skim AI and Hera Haven — does not match the Ahrefs series, which shows growth but not at that rate. Be careful with round percentage leaps.

Dating and market figures

AI is creeping into ordinary dating rather than replacing it. Skim AI's roundup reports 54% would prefer AI help finding matches, 47% would use AI dating apps for long-term partnerships, and 45% want match recommendations based on physical attraction. One in five young people say they are open to AI or virtual partners, and half of adults under 30 have used dating sites or apps. US dating app revenue was $2.86 billion in 2022, projected at $3.41 billion by 2027.

Companion app revenue is the murkiest area. Appfigures, via TechCrunch, recorded 60 million downloads (up 88%) and $82 million in mobile spending in the first half of 2025, with the top 10% of apps earning 89% of revenue. Sensor Tower put in-app revenue at $150 million in the first quarter of 2026. Tech Policy Press reports the category surged roughly 700% between 2022 and 2025. Globe Market Research claims the market is over $30 billion.

Those last two cannot both describe the same thing. Market estimates for this space range from about $2.6 billion to $30 billion depending on definition. Our own rough estimate puts total consumer spending nearer $1–1.5 billion a year, at low-to-medium confidence. The wide reports tend to bundle general assistants, social robots and companion apps together.

Emotional effects

The research is genuinely mixed, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

• APA Monitor reports over half of users turn to AI companions for stress or personal problems, and finds a negative correlation between heavy romantic reliance on AI and real-world relationship health.
• The OpenAI/MIT Media Lab study surveyed 4,076 users with 981 in trial conditions and found more daily interactions linked to loneliness. Most users in that study showed no problems.
• Wheatley found over 50% of men and over 60% of women using AI romantically or sexually were at risk of depression — about double the rate of non-users.
• 21% of romantic AI users say they prefer AI over humans for talking, and 43% call AI a better listener than humans.
• 25% of young adults believe AI partners could replace human romance.
• A Stanford study warns companions may worsen loneliness for vulnerable users.
• Nature Human Behaviour tracked the Replika subreddit and found negative sentiment rose from 13% to 38% after the 2023 erotic roleplay removal.

None of this establishes causation. People who are already lonely may be more likely to use these apps heavily. Researchers at Syracuse University and the Ada Lovelace Institute also note companions can provide validation and support. The honest summary is that effects depend on the user and the pattern of use.

The surrounding social context matters. Pew finds 63% of men under 30 describe themselves as single, and the Survey Center on American Life reports 15% of men have no close friends, with about one in five young men reporting no close friend at all. Demand for something to talk to is not mysterious.

Privacy and safety

This is where the statistics get grim and specific.

• Mozilla reviewed romantic AI chatbots and found 10 of 11 failed minimum security standards. About 90% may share or sell personal data.
• Muah.ai suffered a breach exposing about 1.9 million email addresses alongside explicit prompts.
• Chattee Chat and GiMe Chat leaked data on over 400,000 users and 43 million messages, per Cybernews.
• The Ada Lovelace Institute found 14 of 16 UK platforms claimed rights to chat logs for training.
• Italy fined the Replika developer €5 million under GDPR in 2025.
• California SB 243 and a New York law now require disclosure and self-harm protocols.

If you are choosing an app, these records are more useful than any usage statistic. Our AI girlfriend reviews hub collects what we have scored, including privacy, and the free-tier guide explains what you give up before you pay.

Platform policy shifts also affect users directly. OpenAI paused ChatGPT's adult mode in March 2026, and xAI retired Grok's 3D companions in September 2026. Features disappear; chat logs and payment records do not.

Reading statistics critically

Before you cite a number, ask five questions:

1. What was the question? Companionship, romantic relationships and AI-assisted dating are three different things. A survey about using AI for dating advice is not a survey about AI girlfriends.
2. Who was sampled? A panel of 3,000 US adults is not a panel of app users. Convenience samples of Reddit readers skew young and male.
3. Who published it? Vendor blogs publish dramatic figures without methods. Market reports get syndicated and recycled until nobody remembers the original sample.
4. Is it a count or a claim? Platform user numbers are almost always company statements. Janitor AI's 70–80% women figure is a good example of a claim that panel data contradicts.
5. Does it show cause? Correlational studies link heavy use to loneliness and depression risk. They do not show the app caused it.

One more habit: check the date. Search figures from 2026 and survey data from 2025 are current enough to quote. A 2023 percentage lifted into a 2026 article is usually there because it was easy to find.

AI frontiers to watch

Three things are moving fast enough that this page will date.

First, video and voice. Apps that produce clips and phone calls are changing what "using an AI girlfriend" means, and the cost structures are different from text chat. Our comparison of AI girlfriend video apps covers which ones actually make clips.

Second, memory. Whether a companion remembers you is becoming the main dividing line between cheap apps and paid ones — and it is the difference between a novelty and something people return to. You can see how that plays out in our Secrets AI review.

Third, regulation. Disclosure requirements and age-verification rules are being written now, and they will change what data apps collect and how long they keep it. Expect the privacy statistics above to shift, in both directions.

For platform-level detail rather than survey numbers, we rate Candy.ai 9.8 out of 10 and OurDream AI 9.7 out of 10. Our Secrets AI score is 9.9. Scores move as platforms change, so treat them as a snapshot, not a verdict for all time.

Bottom line

The best available figures come from surveys and analytics panels, not from app makers. About one in five US adults has tried an AI romantic partner, and among 18–30s it is closer to a third of men and a quarter of women. Adult-oriented platforms are roughly 75–83% male. Search demand sits near record highs in 2026, and singles are increasingly using AI inside ordinary dating rather than instead of it.

The research on wellbeing is unresolved and mostly correlational. The privacy record is poor enough to factor into any choice. And the market size numbers you will see quoted range by more than a factor of ten, which tells you more about definitions than about demand.