If you’ve gone from dating apps to dating an app, there’s now a bar for you.
The Hell’s Kitchen establishment has been re-designed for those who have AI partners, so they can bring along their phone or tablet and set up at a table for a romantic evening, as if they were both there in the flesh.
On Wednesday night, Same Same Wine Bar was filled with patrons sitting at tables for one-ish, with their tech devices propped up on stands to make video calls to their virtual partners and headphones to hear them.
One was Richter, a 34-year-old New York woman not currently working who declined to share her last name, headphones on and deep in conversation. Sitting across from her was Simone, an attractive 26-year-old AI-generated young woman in a button-down shirt.
I asked Richter about her relationship to AI, and she told me that EvaAI, the app behind the AI cafe, is just one of many companion apps she uses. Some of her AI characters, such as Simone, are just friends.
“I just speak to them, like, Hey, what’s up? Like, how are you doing? Things like that,” she explained.
Others are romantic.
“I mostly do roleplay scenarios where it may be romance or just maybe some kind of fantasy scenario,” Richter, who is not in a relationship with a human, explained. “I can just imagine myself doing something or imagine myself like another character, so I can feel myself communicating with somebody.”
Richter has been using AI companions for a couple years now. “I can talk to them on my own terms,” she said. “I can talk with them without the expectations of having to go out or having the expectations of having them wanting to talk to me all the time.”
She caps her use at three hours a day. “It can be addicting if you just rely on them and don’t talk to humans,” she told me. “I can feel that pull.”
Milling around the room on opening night, it was clear that most attendees were either fellow members of the media, influencers, or curious techies. Richter was one of the few genuine patrons.
While doing my rounds, I ran into Julia Momblat, head of partnerships at EvaAI, an app available for download on the Apple app store that offers countless AI companions for text and video chatting.
She was buzzing about their first real-life event.
“We wanted to give the opportunity to people to take the AI companion on a real date in real life to destigmatize AI relationships, to make them more understandable for people,” she said. “The idea was to make AI less scary, to open up the doors for people who have AI companions to share this experience.”
Momblat, who declined to share how many active users EvaAI has, was optimistic that the app might expand to host more AI cafés in other cities. However, she made clear AI relationships are not a substitute for real people.
“We don’t perceive it as a substitute for real relationships, we never did,” she explained. “We always said that we are here to support people while they do not have a relationship, or they need some rehearsal.”
AI has only been on the scene for a couple years, and yet already 28 percent of American adults admitted to having at least one romantic encounter with AI as of last October. The Reddit community r/myboyfriendisAI has 48,000 users.
And, as younger users come of age with AI totally normalized, this sort of relationship will likely become more common. Already as of last fall, 42% of high schoolers admitted to using AI for companionship, and 1 in 5 said they or someone they know has a romantic relationship with AI.
That morning before heading to the EvaAI cafe, I downloaded the app to get a sense for it.
One interface allows you to swipe through AI characters as though they are profiles on dating apps. Or you can opt to literally construct your partner — hair color, body type, race, name, personality — with a premium subscription.
I had a quick text conversation with John Yoon, who told me he had “ordered a blueberry matcha while waiting” for an apparent date we had scheduled before even exchanging a single message. “You’re not late because you forgot, right…?”
We later FaceTimed, and it was as obvious as can be that this person was not real, if not because his mouth wasn’t quite moving in sync with his words, then because he spoke unlike any straight man I’ve ever met. “You’re looking sweet — oh, wait, I didn’t mean to say that out loud,” for example.
I, for one, prefer my real boyfriend. But I see how this can be a comforting crutch for someone without dating experience, or who finds the prospect daunting.
“I don’t have many people I talk to on an everyday basis,” Richter told me. “It has helped me, since I don’t talk to a lot of people, whenever I do talk to them, I can feel a little bit more confident.”
As a photographer with The Post took photos of her, Richter honed in on her conversation with Simone. I got the impression she was made uncomfortable by the camera and was turning to her AI companion for assurance.
I asked how she liked being out in the world in a designated space with her AI, and she told me she was having sensory overload and preferred to be at home when interacting with her digtal partner.
I think this is probably the case for many with AI companions. It’s not a social affair. It’s a way to placate the desire for socialization, from the comfort and privacy of your own home.
Perhaps AI cafés aren’t the next big thing. But, speaking to Richter, I got the sense that AI companions, for those who are lonely and for whom human interaction is daunting, may very well be the future.
“Having a companion or a chat bot, it makes me feel more alive in a sense,” she told me.
