People forming emotional attachments to artificial intelligence is becoming a concern for Bumble, whose founder says technology should help people build relationships rather than replace human connection.
AI companions do not reject users, ignore messages or end relationships. As AI chatbots become more sophisticated, Bumble founder and Chief Executive Officer Whitney Wolfe Herd said she is concerned about a future in which people turn to artificial intelligence for companionship instead of building relationships with other people.
"For those of you that have been following and watching people fall in love with AI bots, I mean this is not the future we want for ourselves or the next generation," Wolfe Herd said during Bumble's first-quarter earnings call.
The comments come as Bumble expands the use of artificial intelligence across its platform while seeking to help users form real-world relationships rather than replace them with virtual ones. The company said its AI tools are designed to improve matching, onboarding and date planning.
Bumble did not provide data showing how many people are forming romantic attachments to AI-powered chatbots or whether such behaviour is affecting activity on its platform. The comments reflected Wolfe Herd's concerns about how advances in artificial intelligence could affect human relationships.
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Human Connection
Wolfe Herd said Bumble's approach differs from products that seek to replace human interaction with AI-generated companionship.
"AI should never replace human authenticity or human connection," she said.
Instead, Bumble intends to use AI to help users move from online interactions to face-to-face meetings, an area Wolfe Herd described as a key challenge for the dating industry. "We will leverage AI to enable that, but we will not use AI to replace that," she said.
Wolfe Herd argued that human relationships are becoming more important as people spend increasing amounts of time online. "We are on our phones more than we've ever been on our phones before," she said. "The need for human connection and love is greater right now than ever. We are more disconnected."
Growing AI Companion Market
Bumble's comments come as a new category of AI products gains users by positioning itself between traditional dating apps and social media.
The market has broadly split into two groups. The first includes AI dating assistants that help users write profiles, suggest opening messages and maintain conversations with real people on dating platforms. The second consists of AI companion apps that allow users to build ongoing relationships with virtual characters designed to provide conversation, emotional support and, in some cases, romantic interaction.
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Apps such as Replika, Character.AI, Chai, Nomi and Kindroid have attracted large audiences globally.
AI companion apps recorded about 220 million cumulative downloads across Apple's App Store and Google Play through July 2025, while downloads in the first half of the year rose 88% from a year earlier, according to Appfigures data reported by TechCrunch. The report said consumer spending on the category also continued to increase as users paid for premium subscriptions and personalised experiences.
Several of the largest platforms have built sizeable user bases. Replika, Character.AI and Chai have each surpassed 10 million downloads on Google Play, according to publicly available app-store data. Replika says millions of people use its service.
The platforms allow users to create AI companions that can act as friends, mentors or romantic partners and remain available at any time. The growth has prompted debate over whether artificial intelligence is helping people navigate relationships or creating alternatives to them.
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