Love Takes Time: Faster Romantic Onset, Lower Closeness, and Similarity Benefits in Human-AI Relationships

As human–artificial intelligence (AI) romantic relationships become increasingly prevalent, understanding how they develop is important. Such relationships differ from human–human relationships in how AI partners accommodate user needs and preferences, potentially influencing relationship development and closeness. In this survey ( N = 167), individuals who reported falling in love more quickly with human partners also tended to do so with AI partners. However, paired within-subject analyses ( n = 110) revealed that participants perceived a faster overall pace of falling in love with AI than human partners, driven primarily by shorter conversation lengths rather than fewer days or total conversations. Despite this expediency, participants reported greater current relational closeness with human partners than AI partners. Perceived similarity with AI partners was positively associated with relational closeness and relationship quality with AI. These findings suggest that human–AI romantic relationships may develop rapidly through familiar interpersonal processes such as similarity attraction, yet involve lower relational closeness.