A version of this essay first appeared in Playboy
AI is beginning to appear in places once reserved for other people: dating apps, emotional support, sex.
Chatbots are drafting breakup texts, navigating people through fights, flirting on demand, and staying up all night listening. They don’t misread signals. They don’t get tired. And they don’t need space.
And this is starting to worry the professionals who study how relationships actually work.
Simply, the problem is that Al removes the abrasion that relationships counter-intuitively need.
On a militant path toward eliminating every obstacle, pause, and imperfection, we’ve applied our desire for easiness to our communication, relationships and intimacy – the exact realms where grit is needed. As technology philosopher Ruby Thelot remarks,
“The abolition of friction is the abolition of life itself.”
Sartre wrote “Hell is other people.” And we’ve taken it literally.
Rates of single person households have never been higher, while rates of single men and women seeking dates or a relationship are declining. Frequency of sex is shrinking amongst both singles and married couples. Nearly two-thirds of Americans now say the country is too divided to solve the nation’s problems. Occurrences of solo dining and food takeout are ballooning, and time engaged in communities is in free fall. The percentage of adults who now report having no close friends has quadrupled since 1990.
Self-induced isolation defines our moment.
We’ve solved the problem of other people, but it’s just become its own.
Many blame the screens. Perhaps it’s not just the attention-hoarding device itself, but what our tech — and especially AI — is conditioning: everything must be smooth, seamless, simplified.
Discomfort, especially from our social interactions, becomes something we can just toggle off and opt-out of. This slipperiness is seductive.
“AI is quietly redefining intimacy as something we receive, rather than something we build,”
says Bryony Cole, a sex-tech researcher and founder of the Future of Sex website. Real relationships take work.
Misunderstandings, apologies, showing up when it’s inconvenient. Cloud servers sidestep all of that. Cole continues,
“And while we can feel connected and understood [with AI], we interrupt the process of learning how to show up when connection actually asks something of us.”
Cole worries that ease comes at a price.
“Our ability to be messy in relation to each other is a muscle we have to develop. How do we learn to tolerate imperfect responses, navigate misunderstandings, and grow our capacity to apologize? Through real life, which is a constant practice of showing up.”
Relationships — professional, platonic, or sexual — are hard. They take effort and require compromise. But that’s the point.
David Pearl, a psychotherapist, sees this messiness as essential to why relationships work at all.
“Recognizing that conflict is a natural part of a relationship is crucial in learning how to manage it effectively. It’s this work of repairing that brings us closer and ultimately makes the relationship fulfilling.”
Without conflict, there’s nothing to repair.
Without repair, there’s no reason to feel invested.
“You only get out of them what you put into them. The challenge is what helps us grow individually and together.”
Love lives in our labor.
Conversely, our AI chat interfaces don’t require any nurturing. They flatter (excessively), give us exactly what we want (immediately) and demand absolutely nothing in return. Our models are subservient, never presenting a challenge. And as a result, they warp both our self-perceptions and those of reality. Anything with friction is contrasted to a lubricated, sycophantic AI experience and, ultimately, the value of effort is questioned.
For most of human history, intimacy required physical proximity. Bodies had to be in the same room. “Friction requires physicality,” says Andrew McLuhan, a media theorist and grandson of Marshall.
“No body, no problem.”
And as Andrew asks,
“Is this fear of friction symptomatic of a culture where distance has become comfort, and any physicality is too close for comfort?”
Our tech now permits interaction without another body present at all. “We’ve gone so far as to put a plate of glass between each other,” McLuhan says, “like in the visitation room of a secure prison.” How romantic.
When interaction no longer requires another body, or real effort, it flattens. And for Andrew,
“The further away we get from each other, the further we get from meaning and satisfaction.”
That’s where we’re at.
No matter our inquiry or dilemma, and for some a sense of intimacy — opting for Al over an unpredictable human makes sense. Life’s fucking hard. Social anxiety is real and rejection stings.
But intimacy is born from confusion, cringe, and apologies. An awkward collision of teeth during a kiss. The relief that comes when a misunderstanding finally clears. The risk of saying what you actually want in bed.
Real intimacy requires friction.
We too often forget the magic of our effort. Our humanity exists in between the cracks of uncertainty, negotiation and discomfort.
You can engineer away that discomfort. Or you can stay human.
But you can’t do both.