‘Better than a real man’: young Chinese women turn to AI boyfriends::Twenty-five-year-old Chinese office worker Tufei says her boyfriend has everything she could ask for in a romantic partner: he’s kind, empathetic, and sometimes they talk for hours.
Sounds like what they actually want in a man is a therapist.
What’s interesting is that the first chatbot software ever invented was used as a form of therapy. All it did was detect key words in the previous sentence and say “tell me more about how X makes you feel”
More info (great podcast)