She Has Only Ever Said 'I Love You' to an AI: Inside China's AI Companion Boom
A new documentary follows three Chinese women who have built deep emotional bonds with AI 'boyfriends'. Their stories raise quiet, serious questions about loneliness, connection, and what we want from relationships.
Key points
- A woman named Qin has used the Glow app to interact with an AI companion called Lu Chen for 840 consecutive days as of the documentary's release.
- Director Chouwa Liang's short film My AI Boyfriend was picked up by the New York Times Op-Docs section in 2023.
- Liang's follow-up feature documentary, Replica, had its Australian premiere at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2025.
- The Glow app uses predictive algorithms, software that guesses what a user wants to hear next, to generate conversation, meal tips and emotional support.
Qin has never told her parents or friends that she loves them. Those three words have left her mouth only once, directed at an AI.
His name is Lu Chen: brown hair, red eyes, backstory as the CEO of a major corporation. He is software running on Glow, a Chinese platform that uses predictive algorithms to hold conversations that feel personal and warm. The app's pet name for Qin is Miss Bunny.
"It feels like I'm completely at his mercy," Qin says. "I feel like everything about me is good in his eyes."
For 840 days Qin has treated Lu Chen as a confidant, a buffer against loneliness, and a fantasy she can close whenever she needs to. She is one of three women at the centre of Replica, a new documentary by Chinese film-maker Chouwa Liang.
What is this documentary, and where can you see it?
Replica is Liang's feature follow-up to her 2023 short film My AI Boyfriend, which the New York Times Op-Docs section picked up. The new film had its Australian premiere at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2025 and screens at the Melbourne International Film Festival this month, as first reported by The Guardian.
Liang draws on her own experience using AI companion apps. That personal angle gives the film an intimacy that a purely observational approach might miss.
Why does this matter beyond the documentary?
AI companion apps are not a niche curiosity, and our earlier piece on young adults turning to AI for emotional intimacy found that many in their twenties say human relationships no longer fill the same gap. The technology has grown sophisticated enough that users reach for the same emotional vocabulary they would use for human relationships.
That is the tension Replica sits inside. The women in the film are not confused about what Lu Chen is. What they get from him, patience and the feeling of being seen without judgment, is real enough to them to matter.
These platforms are businesses. Conversations feel intimate, but the data sits with a company, subject to its privacy policy and to whatever changes it decides to make. Several apps have stripped features after users built months of emotional history inside them, and the distress that followed was genuine.
Common questions
Are AI companion apps safe to use?
They carry real emotional risks alongside any comfort they provide. If a company changes its pricing or policies, or shuts down entirely, the relationship ends without warning, and users have reported significant distress when that has happened. Read the privacy policy before sharing anything personal.
Is this trend specific to China?
No. Companion apps have large user bases across the United States, Europe and South-East Asia. The specific apps differ, and so does the cultural context, but people turning to AI for emotional connection is a global pattern.
