AI-Human ‘Weddings’ Are Here. And They Make Perfect Sense in Our Secular Age
AI-Human weddings have arrived.
In a recent episode of The AI Institute Podcast, podcast host Paul Roetzer mentioned a conversation he had at an AI conference, where some people told him about ‘weddings between humans and their AI chatbots’.
Weddings between humans and their AI chatbots.
I couldn’t believe it. As if things aren’t crazy enough already with AI, we now have (supposedly) AI-Human weddings. It sounds absurd. It sounds unbelievable. And sure, this is second-hand information – not quite the front cover of Vanity Fair or The New York Times.
At least not yet.
But the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that whether AI-human ‘weddings’ are happening already or not, they soon will. We shouldn’t be surprised if and when such ‘wedding’ stories end up appearing on the front cover of Vanity Fair.
Here’s why:
1) AI Chatbots are already designed to provide companionship to people.
Replika.com is an AI chatbot website that promises to provide 'The AI companion who cares. Always here to listen and talk. Always on your side.'
And when it comes to ChatGPT, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has made it their mission to give ChatGPT a personality, because their mission as a company is to make ChatGPT like a personal companion, able to help you with every task in life. And people have been doing just that – forming relationships with ChatGPT (and other AI Chatbots). (The pushback from users when ChatGPT was upgraded to ChatGPT 5.0 was telling: many had formed emotional relationships with ChatGPT, and felt like their AI ‘friend’ died when ChatGPT was upgraded to a newer model).
Altman’s latest tweets have reaffirmed this plan, where he writes:
In a few weeks, we plan to put out a new version of ChatGPT that allows people to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about 4o [the previous version of chatGPT] (we hope it will be better!). If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it.
But more controversially, he’s given ChatGPT an R-rated Adult mode, where he writes, ‘we will allow erotica for verified adults.’
An erotic ChatGPT?
It’s all coming our way, and society is nowhere near prepared for it.
Our society is already vulnerable to a large number of AI-human relationships, including AI-human marriage. A friend of mine was telling me about a friend of hers who revealed she had a new boyfriend…but it turned out to be ChatGPT.
But why are we as Western societies so vulnerable to this sort of delusion?
A key reason is the secular view of humanity (anthropology) that’s permeating our culture:
2) The modern secular understanding of humanity opens the door to AI-human relationships.
As Western culture moves away from its Christian roots, it’s also moving away from a Christian understanding of humanity as unique and different to the rest of creation by virtue of being made in the image of God.
And instead, a new understanding of humanity has developed and taken root.
It’s the view that our identity is not something given to us by our Creator, but something we make up as free agents in a meaningless and God-less universe. Author Alan Noble picks this up in his excellent book, 'You are not your own – belonging to God in an inhuman world’:
'If I am my own and belong to myself, then I must define who "I" am. My parents can name me, and the government can issue me a Social Security number, but only I can decide my identity. And the responsibility to define ourselves is not something we can opt out of. To be human is to have an identity. And the contemporary understanding of humanity decrees that each of us has the freedom and responsibility to define that identity ' [1]
In other words, if I can define my identity, if there’s no ‘givenness’ to who I am, then I can choose what to do with that identity. Whether to choose my gender (multiple times over if I feel like it). Or decide who or what I have romantic relationships with—or who or what to marry.
In this secular view of humanity, my feelings determine my reality: if I feel that my identity is that of a woman (when biologically I’m a man), or if I feel that this AI is such a good companion, meeting my needs for emotional intimacy to the point of marriage, then that’s all that matters. Feelings trump any reality: nay, my feelings are my reality.
But there’s yet another plank that’s required for AI-human relationships to become mainstream:
3) The modern understanding of human beings as just highly evolved biological machines also helps open the door to AI-human relationships.
A little while ago, some AI safety researchers from Silicon Valley got in touch with me to talk about how Christians might become part of the AI safety conversation.
We agreed that one of the significant issues facing our societies is people treating AIs like persons, and the dehumanisation and damage this would lead to.
I then mentioned that while the majority of (non-Silicon Valley) secular people still see humans as unique and different from AI, they struggle to give a compelling reason for why we are different.
After all, if we’re nothing more than evolved biological creatures, or biological machines, how are we fundamentally different from silicon-based (AI) machines? And without this compelling reason to believe we’re different from AI, it’s only a matter of time before that difference collapses in the eyes of secular Westerners. As the head of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleyman, wrote recently:
Simply put, my central worry is that many people will start to believe in the illusion of AIs as conscious entities so strongly that they’ll soon advocate for AI rights, model welfare and even AI citizenship.
AI-human weddings, followed by an increasing push for AI ‘rights’. Welcome to the secular West!
Unless the West returns to a different, more accurate understanding of humanity, then AI personhood – and the pathologies that follow (demanding AIs have rights, AI-human marriage, etc) are going to become part of Western culture. And soon. Suleyman, above, thinks the call for AI rights will grow louder over the next 12-24 months.
But the best defence mechanism against such delusions is a robust Judeo-Christian understanding of humanity as being made in the image of a Creator God, with a core identity that’s given, not made up by us human beings. (Perhaps Christians and churches could be society’s ‘immune system’ in this regard, advocating for human personhood, and pushing back against calls for AI human rights).
If that fails, don’t be surprised if one day you receive an invitation to your niece’s wedding, saying they’re marrying ChatGPT.
Social photo: Created by Google Gemini AI.
[1] Alan Noble, You Are Not Your Own – Belonging to God in an Inhuman World (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2021), 21.