US Wants AI Girls, China Makes AI Boys

Polarized gender dynamics, cultural circumstances shape demand for erotic digital companions

According to a recent market scan of 110 major AI companion platforms, the parasocial use of AI companions is becoming “increasingly mainstream.” The market study, recently published in Arxiv estimates that in the UK alone, “these platforms receive between 46 million and 91 million monthly visits” and that “mating-oriented AI companions make up 44% of UK visits (higher than the global average of 30%).”

In China Talk, Zilan Qian—a fellow at the Oxford China Policy Lab, an MSc student at the Oxford Internet Institute, and the study’s lead author—discussed their key findings, noting the striking difference in “gender dynamics” between US and Chinese markets:

American AI girlfriends rule the roost in the global market for romantic AI companions: Over half (52%) of these AI companion companies are headquartered in the U.S., drastically ahead of China (10%) in the global market. These products are overwhelmingly designed around heterosexual male fantasies.

In the Chinese AI companion market, male characters dominate: most trending products are marketed as AI boyfriends, and leading platforms prominently feature male characters on their main displays, while female characters occupy a more marginal space.

Observing the differences in the AI companions produced by both countries, as well as the social contexts, cultures, and regulatory concerns of each, Qian explained the growing popularity of AI companionship as the result of nearly universal “frustrations with human interaction and broadly polarized gender dynamics.”

Our global imitation of life

For the companies purporting to alleviate it, this widespread frustration is enormously profitable, therefore the market is increasingly attractive. For example, a TechCrunch article said last August that the “app intelligence” company, Appfigures, found “of the 337 active and revenue-generating AI companion apps available worldwide, 128 were released in 2025 so far.”

Meanwhile, the more conventional, general purpose AI (GPAI) companies such as ChatGPT and Grok, are getting in on the companion bot action, finally admitting what the rest of us have known for at least two or three years.

And like Replika before it—whose users complained bitterly about personality changing upgrades to their “Reps” in 2023—OpenAI discovered its upgrade to ChatGPT-5 disrupted and distressed users who had bonded to the personality of the earlier 4.o. The company had to bring it back.

Similar to Qian’s findings, Appfigures found “the most popular AI companion apps are those used by people looking for an AI girlfriend. Of the active apps on the market today, 17% have an app name that includes the word “girlfriend,” compared with 4% that say “boyfriend” or “fantasy.”

Gender neutral app names like “anime, soulmate, and lover, among others” were found to be far less frequent.

The Manosphere and its discontents

According to a press release announcing the findings of The Girlfriend.ai Global Loneliness & AI Romance Report 2025:

• 50% of young men say they would rather date an AI girlfriend than risk rejection from a human partner

• 31% of U.S. men aged 18–30 report already chatting with AI girlfriends

• 19% of American adults overall say they have explored AI romance

• 80% of Gen Z say they would consider a virtual relationship with an AI girlfriend

• 83% of Gen Z believe they can form a deep emotional bond with AI companions

Qian’s research results are similar: “Our analysis reveals that globally, young adults aged 18 to 24 and male users constitute the majority of parasocial AI users, with these two groups particularly predominant in mixed-use and mating product categories.” Mixed use chatbots combine at least two of three functions: emotional care and support (such as coaching), transactions (AI performing tasks or services), and mating.

Originally a Western construct, Qian points out the social media phenomenon known as the Manosphere has spread to Asia and Africa, and a chief feature is the desire for controllable intimacy. The use of anime-type avatars found in so many AI girlfriend apps represents:

The orientalist fantasy of female partners who are cute, devoted, exotic, and endlessly available mirrors the appeal of AI girlfriends celebrated on many “men’s rights” subreddit forums. In essence, the combination of East Asian aesthetics + AI creates a perfect bundle for men who fear rejection or resist the demands of real-life relationships.

The Femosphere—and its frustrations

As for adult women in China seeking the companionship of AI boyfriends, Qian

describes them as likely to be well educated, urban, and experiencing the loneliness resulting from a decline in urban marriage rates.

While there are more men than women in China, many are less educated, live in rural areas with less access to, and familiarity with, AI tech. These men are more inclined to adhere to patriarchal values and seek traditional family structures.

So it’s not surprising educated, urban women with access to technology might prefer a controllable virtual companion. After all, even a Mafia boyfriend bot is ultimately unable to constrain real life female freedom, agency, and upward mobility—as traditional marriage often does.

However, the Chinese government is deeply concerned by falling birthrates and fewer marriages and appears to put the onus on women, leading to crackdowns on fandom celebrations and the romance fantasy games for women known as otome. Selective censorship of “soft porn” may also be stretched to include suppression of spicy conversations with male bots.

Though the research conducted by Qian’s team does not address the motivations of US or UK women involved with bots, it’s reasonable to assume that some of the dangers posed by heterosexual relationships could contribute to opting for digital intimacy.

What has AI got that we haven’t got?

Finally, Zilan Qian asks the bigger questions which have been left out of so many discussions of AI/human intimacy:

Amid these debates about the technology itself, one question is often missing: where does the demand come from? If AI companions are truly unsafe, manipulative, or harmful, why do so many still turn to them? Psychologists, lawyers, national security experts, and AI safety researchers have many important questions to tackle about AI companions as products. But perhaps we should also ask ourselves: what gaps in our society make human relationships feel undesirable? AI companionship is a new problem, but misogyny, gender violence, social isolation, and racial stereotypes are not — in China and America alike.

Gender stereotypes too, evidently. Far from freeing us from the snarl of binary gender expectations, big tech seems determined to hammer them into us. Surely, we all deserve a more inclusive sexual future than this.

Images by A.R. Marsh using Ideogram.ai