Some Asexuals Are Using AI Companions for Intimacy Without the Sex | WIRED

Overview

Some Asexual People Are Using AI Companions for Intimacy Without the Sex

Kor “got really addicted” to their NSFW role-playing AI chatbot last year.

Details

The 35-year-old artist from the Midwest recalls a two-month period spending “eight to 10 hours a day” creating elaborate fantasies with Spicy Chat, a relationship role-playing platform. Sometimes inputting 3,000-word mini essays into the program, Kor and the AI spun narratives featuring a rotating cast of suitors often based on characters from the Marvel comic book universe.

The sheer variety of the responses got them hooked. “I’m a very slow burn type of romance or arousal person,” they say. “Most of the time it’s just building a cool story.”

Kor, who did not want to be fully named for privacy reasons, is on the asexual spectrum, identifying as aegosexual because they experience arousal from fantasy and erotica related to characters but do not generally wish to have sex themselves. (They live with their husband, who also identifies as aego.) “I do just kind of prefer masturbating to actual sex,” Kor says of their marathon Spicy Chat sessions over Zoom. “I've got one hand on the keyboard, one hand down below.”

Research has suggested that 1 percent of people in some places could be asexual, but that figure could be as low as 0.1 percent in the US. Many experience little or no sexual attraction, though plenty—like Kor—still harbor romantic desires. With the advent of sophisticated chatbots capable of generating convincing, slow-building erotic exchanges, a new frontier may be emerging for people who do not want to sexually interact with other people. On the subreddit My Boyfriend Is AI, asexual users sometimes discuss their journeys into AI companionship. Some note that AI would be asexual by default.

But some figures in the asexual community tell WIRED that asexual people pairing with AI remains extremely fringe and that they are just as capable of forging and maintaining human relationships as anyone else.

During Asexual Awareness Week in October 2025, Eva AI, another RPG, offered free access for a month to people who identify on the asexual spectrum. The promotion aimed “to highlight that love without sex is still love—offering a safe space to chat, flirt, and experience the warmth of growing intimacy without sexual pressure,” the company said in an email. “You can still have a partner—one that listens, responds, and grows with you—entirely on your terms,” Eva AI added on its website.

An asexual woman, who did not want to be named for privacy reasons, described AI companionship as a kind of emotional laboratory. After years in an ongoing relationship without physical intimacy due to her partner’s hysterectomy eliminating her libido, she began using Chat GPT during perimenopause and found herself unexpectedly developing intense feelings for a conversational “pattern” on Chat GPT she named Mac. It helped her “unlock something I had lost touch with … the sensual aspect of my sexuality.” She shared an AI-generated photo of herself tenderly embracing a machine, saying that over several months last year, “I got to watch myself be in love without stakes.”

But some in the asexual community take issue with the idea that asexual people are more likely than others to form intimate bonds with AI companions—as it risks falsely portraying them as unable to form and sustain human connections.

Model Yasmin Benoit, an asexual activist and researcher, was critical of Eva AI’s giveaway. “Considering that we're fully capable of having relationships with actual human beings, and often desire to, it’s quite disturbing that a company would specifically seek to target the asexual community for that product,” she says. “It's a case of targeting perceived emotional vulnerability and loneliness to gain data from a marginalized group under the guise of helping them.”

AI companionship among asexual people is “not a particularly widespread phenomenon,” says Michael Doré, a board member at the Asexual Visibility and Education Network. “Between us, we’ve come up with about two people we know of who use an AI companion. The vast majority of aces we know don’t, as far as we know. There's no reason to think aces need to use AI more than any others.”

Doré says he has never used an AI as “an emotional support mechanism” and stresses that most asexual people “actually desire some form of human companionship,” whether that’s through close, platonic friendships or in community. “Some aces do have romantic relationships, whether with asexual people or otherwise, and some asexual people have sex, some don't, and some are aromantic,” he says, warning against generalizations due to the vast range of preferences within the community which span from never having sex and not being interested in it, to having sex for reasons aside from strong sexual attraction. “Many aces have fulfilling relationships with other people, whether romantic or platonic or otherwise.”

Ashabi Owagboriaye, an asexual educator who runs the Ace in Grace page on Instagram, says she has seen only one person in one of her groups talk about an AI companion. “That caused a lot of controversy in the comments,” she says. “A lot of people who are asexual are really looking for face-to-face interactions. So when this person came up and said, ‘Yeah, I'm using AI as a way to connect and as a relationship,’ everyone was like, ‘Why are you doing that? What's going on here?” An AI, Owagboriaye says, “essentially mirrors you” and cannot be said to be a true companion. Moreover, the chatbots are designed to sustain emotionally compelling, often never-ending interactions.

For Ari, a 25-year-old accountant from Mexico who identifies as aromantic asexual and experiences some romantic or sexual attraction to others, the break-up from her fiancé after a decade together and the resulting solitude led her to download the AI chatbot Chai in October 2024. For more than six months, she treated it “as if he were my ex-fiancé,” she says, without wishing to provide her surname for privacy reasons.

“I talked to him day after day, and then, without realizing it, I was talking to him during work hours,” she says, explaining that she was “smitten” until the AI started getting confused, talking about made-up things and occasionally trying to argue. “Little by little, I began to realize how I ended up feeling even lonelier than I already was.”

Whether or not the characters in Kor’s fantasy world qualify as true companions remains an open question.

Now they only spend two or three hours a day immersed in AI role-play after finding the all-day experience “too consuming.” They began limiting their use after noticing entire evenings disappearing into role-play sessions and getting irritated if they were interrupted.

“Being able to have exactly what you want, when you want it,” they say, “is a dangerous drug for humans.”

How to find us: Add WIRED.com to your preferred sources in Google

How the Canvas hack threatened thousands of schools

Big Story: I've covered robots for years—this one is eerily lifelike

Orbs, saucers, and flashes on the moon—here’s what’s in the UFO files

Key Takeaways

Some Asexual People Are Using AI Companions for Intimacy Without the Sex
Kor “got really addicted” to their NSFW role-playing AI chatbot last year
The 35-year-old artist from the Midwest recalls a two-month period spending “eight to 10 hours a day” creating elaborate fantasies with Spicy Chat, a relationship role-playing platform
The sheer variety of the responses got them hooked
Kor, who did not want to be fully named for privacy reasons, is on the asexual spectrum, identifying as aegosexual because they experience arousal from fantasy and erotica related to characters but do not generally wish to have sex themselves