Two years ago, Cosmopolitan declared that AI was coming for your dating life. Back then, AI’s impending influence on the state of modern love still felt largely theoretical, a prediction that seemed to have more to do with the future of technology than anything that was actually going on in anyone’s love life. But within the past year, it’s become clear that the future is now: AI has officially entered some of the most intimate parts of human life, with reports of AI boyfriends, breakups, cheating, and sexting dominating headlines in recent months.
For better or worse, it seems AI has indeed come for our dating lives, and you don’t even need to have an AI boyfriend of your own to feel the effects. In fact, I fear that even if you refuse to touch the tech itself with a 10-foot pole, AI can still infiltrate your love life should you happen to be in a relationship with someone who’s sold their soul to the bots. Enter: the “AI gap relationship.”
Just as an age gap relationship is one between two people of significantly different ages, an AI gap relationship is one in which partners have drastically different views on AI. Also like an age gap, the discrepancy of an AI gap can potentially create tension or distance between a couple and may even present a fundamental incompatibility.
“As AI becomes more pervasive in our lives and careers, it is also beginning to impact how we establish and maintain relationships,” says Match Group advisor Justin Garcia, PhD, executive director of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University and author of The Intimate Animal. “If couples have drastically different habits and views about how to engage with AI, this can become a source of conflict.”
While AI use is undoubtedly becoming more normalized, it remains no less divisive. Many eager AI adopters may already consider the tech an indispensable part of daily life, but others continue to avoid or reject it entirely. Wherever you happen to fall on that spectrum, the choices we make regarding AI are about more than just tech—they reflect the kinds of beliefs and values that may inform a significant ideological divide. As the AI revolution continues to touch and potentially transform many aspects of human existence as we know it, differing attitudes toward AI may amount to “differing worldviews” altogether, says relationship expert Thais Gibson, PhD, founder of the Personal Development School.
“When technology evolves quickly, it’s natural for people to integrate it at different speeds and with different levels of comfort,” Gibson explains. “That gap can mirror other value-based differences we’ve seen before, such as those around social media, work-life balance, privacy, or even political or cultural beliefs.”
Naturally, this can have major implications for romantic compatibility. “In the dating landscape, we may see people becoming more mindful of value alignment around technology,” says Gibson. “People may naturally gravitate toward partners who share similar comfort levels or values around AI.”
Of course, there may very well come a day when AI use is so widespread that it’s more or less mandatory for anyone interested in participating in society, ultimately rendering any AI compatibility divide moot. But for the time being, we exist in an interesting moment in which those who use AI for everything and those who refuse to use it for anything live and work side by side, inhabiting the same communities and swimming in the same social circles...including the same dating pools.
Many popular dating apps now encourage users to disclose various values and lifestyle choices that matches may consider make-or-break compatibility indicators, such as religion, political beliefs, family plans, and drinking habits. As AI icks and deal-breakers emerge among daters hoping to avoid a relationship with a bot-brained zombie who will leave them for an AI sidepiece, perhaps we will soon be able to filter out matches based on AI views the same we can quickly swipe left on someone with opposing political ones.
But what about couples in relationships that pre-date the age of AI? Specifically, partners who may have recently found themselves on opposite sides of an ideological divide that didn’t exist a few years ago?
Relationship expert Carolina Pataky, PhD, founder of South Florida’s Love Discovery Institute, says she is already seeing evidence of AI gaps showing up in relationships. However, she adds the major caveat that AI itself likely isn’t creating new problems for couples but rather exposing existing vulnerabilities.
“Most conflicts about AI are not actually about technology. They are about safety, relevance, autonomy, and closeness,” Pataky says. “Technology does not create distance on its own. It magnifies the distance that already exists.”
In some cases, the fissures highlighted by an AI gap may reveal a difference in core values significant enough to threaten a relationship. But Pataky notes that partners don’t need to be perfectly aligned to be compatible. “Couples do not struggle because they are different. They struggle when difference becomes disconnect,” she says. “The real work is not to agree on AI but to stay in honest, ongoing conversation about what each person fears, desires, and hopes for as the world changes.”
Gibson agrees that true compatibility is less about partners having identical views than how they handle differing ones: “When couples approach these conversations with curiosity, empathy, and emotional regulation, differences can become an opportunity for deeper understanding and connection rather than division. The goal isn’t to eliminate differences; it’s to stay on the same team while navigating them.”
Meanwhile, AI gaps in relationships can sometimes be more practical than ideological. For some AI gap couples, the concern may be less about how partners feel about AI as a concept than how the actual use of it is affecting the relationship—especially if one partner uses it significantly more frequently or for more invasive purposes than the other. While Pataky notes that AI use can exist within and even enhance healthy relationships, she cautions that it can also become a mechanism of avoidance used to outsource emotional processing or postpone difficult conversations, ultimately creating distance between partners.
“The impact of AI depends far less on the technology itself and far more on how consciously it is integrated into the relationship,” says Pataky. “When couples use AI as a supplement to connection, it can be supportive. When they use it as a substitute for connection, it tends to undermine intimacy.”
Both Pataky and Gibson encourage couples to engage in open, ongoing conversations about AI to communicate concerns, navigate differing opinions, and, if necessary, set mutually agreed upon boundaries regarding its use.
“The healthiest stance is flexible, transparent, and relationally anchored; ongoing dialogue matters more than arriving at a perfect policy,” says Pataky, adding that partners will likely need to revisit this conversation as AI continues to evolve. “Above all, couples need to protect one sacred principle: Technology should enhance intimacy, not replace it.”
