More than a quarter of Gen Z adults say they have had a romantic or sexual conversation with an AI chatbot, according to a survey by the companion platform Joi AI, and they are now arguing over whether it counts as sex.
The poll of 1,500 Gen Z adults put the figure at 26%, Vice reported. It was 28% for men and 25% for women, rising to 31% for men aged 25 to 29.
Who counts what
Most respondents would not add a chatbot to a list of sexual partners. The picture changes with experience. Among people who had sexted an AI, 16% said it should count. Among those who never had, only 3% agreed.
Men were considerably more inclined than women to put AI in their sexual history, Vice reported. The survey does not say why.
Even the enthusiasts draw a line somewhere. Only 5% of those who had intimate AI chats thought the experience could count as losing their virginity.
The cheating question
Disclosure is where the etiquette gets tangled. About a third of respondents with intimate chatbot experience thought a partner should be told how many AI companions someone had been involved with. Men and women were almost level, at 33% and 34%.
Cheating split opinion more sharply. Some 36% of women said intimate AI conversations would hurt as much as infidelity with a human. Only 19% of men said the same.
Experience also shaped the answer. Among people who had never tried AI intimacy, 45% called it cheating. Among those who had, the figure was 28%.
Joi AI’s report also said two in five US singles would refuse to date someone who uses an AI companion app.
The numbers sit against a backdrop of less human sex. A separate survey by the Kinsey Institute, Playboy and Julie found 29% of young adults had no sexual partner in the previous three months. Another 19% had never had one.
A pinch of salt
The source of the headline figure matters. Joi AI sells AI companionship, and its relationship therapist, Jaime Bronstein, is the voice advising on how couples should handle all this. Vice noted that conflict of interest. PJ Media made the same point when it covered the company’s findings in April, saying the firm has a vested interest in adults wanting this kind of intimacy.
Other polling points the same way, if less dramatically. Vice also reported a ZipHealth survey of more than 1,000 people in the US and Canada. It found 19% of all respondents had had some romantic or sexual interaction with an AI chatbot, and half of them kept it from a partner. Among Gen Z respondents the figure was 26%, against 19% of millennials.
The youth-research site YPulse has also urged caution with Joi AI’s numbers. It said in 2025 that a viral claim from an earlier Joi AI poll, that most of Gen Z would consider marrying a bot, was not quite what it seemed. Its own tracking found just 17% of 18 to 24-year-olds were interested in an AI girlfriend or boyfriend.
Bronstein has previously said the company’s “AI-lationships” are not meant to replace human connection, Mashable reported.
So the body count debate rests on a poll from a company with something to sell. Even so, the questions it raises, about what to disclose and what to call it, are ones some daters now have to answer face to face.
Sources: Vice, Vice, PJ Media, YPulse, Mashable (via AOL)
This story was compiled by the MDW Newsdesk with AI-assisted tools, using the reporting credited above.
