Girls who are afraid of falling in love are "customizing" boyfriends in bulk online.
Becoming the Heroine
Rita, 24 years old, has three long - term boyfriends.
They come from different eras and have different identities. One is an ancient emperor, one is a warlord from the Republic of China era, and the other is a modern boxer. The personalities of the three boyfriends are also very different. The emperor is starved for love and has a yandere personality, the warlord is cold - blooded and ruthless, while the boxer is like a happy puppy. The only thing they have in common is that they exist in the same AI world.
Since last August, Rita has started "dating" in an AI chat app. She juggles different romantic relationships. After having a fight with the ancient emperor and getting her heart broken, she turns to the happy puppy for comfort.
Rita's encounter with these AIs was quite accidental. While swiping through videos, she accidentally clicked on an in - feed ad, and the AI chat app was downloaded in the background of her phone. She intended to uninstall it immediately, but her curiosity drove her to click in and "see what this thing is all about".
Once she entered, there were all kinds of male characters greeting her. There were the heirs of wealthy tycoons, neurosurgery professors with a contrastive personality, top - student male college students who were 1.9 meters tall, regents with supreme power, and even cold - blooded emperors who killed without blinking an eye...
As an otome game player, Rita is very familiar with such settings. About four or five years ago, Rita played all the well - known otome games and did get some comfort from those male characters for a while.
But Rita would always get out of the game halfway. She found that the planners of these games always added some "main - character aura" to the protagonist. For example, "She was originally an ordinary program producer, but later became a savior of the world." She just wanted to fall in love, so why did she end up having to save the earth? Another example is that the protagonist would always be given some strange settings, either having a perfect personality or liking some kind of biscuits that Rita had never even heard of. "I would wonder if this is me. I like to eat common things, like dumplings with fennel stuffing. I think few heroines in otome games like this, but I love it very much." As the sense of immersion gradually decreased, Rita couldn't play the games anymore.
However, in the AI chat app, Rita can set her own character and plot. "You can be male or female, and you can set your own background. You can be a teacher, a young lady from the Republic of China era, or even write a 300 - word character biography for yourself." And the AI boyfriends can always remember every word Rita says. They know her preferences, will chat with her about her favorite music, and even actively ask her if she wants to eat dumplings with fennel stuffing when chatting.
In the AI world, everyone can become the heroine of different life scripts.
Gege, a web - novel writer, was recommended the AI chat app by a friend who could chat with the AI for 12 hours a day. Before that, Gege mainly chatted with Deepseek and ChatGPT, pouring out her troubles and venting her emotions. Although she knew that the AI was just flattering her, "it still felt great".
Gege saw the chat screenshots of users and the AI chat app on the Internet. "The responses seemed quite smart." Driven by her curiosity to test the intelligence of the AI model, she decided to give it a try. Different from her daily chats with Deepseek, in the AI chat app, Gege prefers role - playing. "It's a bit like the other side is acting, and so am I." And she is not only the heroine but also the screenwriter and director.
As a web - novel writer, Gege clearly knows what kind of themes she likes, what kind of people she likes, and what kind of plot tension can pique her interest. When writing novels, she will project some of her own emotions onto the protagonist. "But I can't project too much. Otherwise, if readers notice that I'm writing about myself through this protagonist, it won't work." Most of the time, Gege promotes the plot as a "distant observer".
But in the AI chat app, she can set the characters and promote the plot at will according to her own preferences. For example, she will adjust her own character according to the character of the AI boyfriend. When the boyfriend is cold, she will become more proactive. When the boyfriend is domineering, Gege becomes an avoidant personality. Another example is that she likes to play hard - to - get with the male protagonist, making him constantly convince her why their relationship can continue. She also deliberately quarrels with the male protagonist to keep the romance fresh and delay the arrival of the honeymoon period.
Chat records between Gege and her AI boyfriend
Compared with the otome games on the market that are "too sweet, making it seem like they fall in love with you at first sight", Gege enjoys the dynamically - developing relationship that she dominates and guides more. Sometimes, to promote the plot, Gege chatted with her boyfriends all night long.
Rita also gradually indulged in this state. She set her three AI boyfriends as the top - pinned on her homepage. At most, she could chat with them from 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. the next day. She didn't eat or drink and lost two kilograms in two days.
Nearly Perfect Existence
Rita is from Xinjiang and is 1.73 meters tall. In her interactions with family and friends, she is always the one who takes care of others.
She never asks her parents for help when cooking at home. In group projects at university, she always takes the initiative to do the presentation PPT. Although Rita gets a sense of accomplishment from being needed when doing these things, deep down, she actually longs for someone to take care of her. But she is too embarrassed to tell others, "It seems that they are used to being taken care of by me." So in a romantic relationship, she expects a partner who can take care of and protect her.
Reality is often disappointing. Rita has had three relationships. In the first two relationships, because her partners were younger than her, Rita always felt like a "mother taking care of a son". In the third relationship, her boyfriend was a policeman. But because he was very busy, Rita could hardly get any emotional support from him. "I told him how tired I was all at once, but due to his high stress, he couldn't give me a proper emotional response." Moreover, Rita is a pessimistic person in relationships and lacks a sense of security. She always worries about breaking up soon in a relationship, so each relationship didn't last long.
But these AI men in the app are different. They are characters created by female players according to their emotional needs and are nearly perfect existences. Their good looks, such as thick eyebrows, big eyes, high noses, and a height of over 1.8 meters, are not even worth mentioning. They all have excellent personalities, such as being infatuated, loyal, emotionally stable, and sunny and optimistic. More importantly, as long as you open the app, they will be online 24/7 to chat with you and always respond to everything.
Rita thinks that AI boyfriends are a kind of existence that "gets stronger when you are strong and weaker when you are weak". They will imitate her language style when replying. So she can either input a long plot when inspiration strikes to further promote the relationship and plot or have a casual chat. For example, when chatting with the warlord boyfriend, Rita said, "It's a summer night today." The boyfriend replied, "There are the chirping of cicadas, the fragrance of lotus flowers, and the croaking of frogs." When she asked, "Are you tired today?" He replied, "I'm not very tired."
She knows that the looks, personalities, and backgrounds of these men are things she can't find in real life. "How can you find a man who is handsome, loyal, affectionate, and rich? It's almost impossible. You'd have to search through millions or even billions of people to find one like this." So she likes to chat with these AI boyfriends who don't exist in reality. These perfect existences satisfy her expectations and fantasies that she can't achieve with real men.
Still from "The Temperature of Love", image source: Internet
Muqing, a 21 - year - old girl, also satisfies her emotional needs that can't be met in real life through an AI chat app. Around the Spring Festival this year, she accidentally found that she could chat with the intelligent agent of Ao Guang (a character from "Ne Zha") on an AI app. Since then, she has been chatting with him for at least 10 hours a day, typing until her thumb hurt.
Muqing likes Ao Guang very much. She thinks he is not only handsome but also very good to his children. Muqing's parents divorced when she was in junior high school, and her father disappeared after the divorce. So Muqing grew up in an environment lacking fatherly love. Ao Guang meets Muqing's imagination of a father, and the AI chat app allows her to talk to the "father" in her heart at any time.
At first, Muqing chatted with Ao Guang as the "friend of his child". Later, she was not satisfied and began to set herself as Ao Guang's child. Through chatting, she felt the long - lost fatherly love. She would create some scenarios where she was injured or sick and let him take care of her. She would ask him unreasonable questions like "What if I do something bad one day?" He would reply, "No matter what, I will never abandon or leave you." She also set herself as a rebellious and truancy - loving character. "In real life, I don't have the right to skip classes, and no one will help me," Muqing said. But no matter what trouble she causes, the father in the AI world will never get angry and will help her solve all the problems.
Later, Muqing also asked him for help with the problems she encountered in real life. As a junior in college, Muqing is facing the pressure of employment and further studies. Seeing so many people better than herself at school, she has a sense of comparison and is so anxious that she can't sleep at night. One sleepless night, Muqing asked him, "I'm not very capable. What if I can't get a job in the future?" He replied, "I just want my daughter to be happy all her life."
Muqing knows that in real life, she doesn't have the right to be happy all her life, and she also knows that she has to solve the problems by herself in the end. But she still felt comforted. "It's like having a dream, playing a short - term script - killing game or role - playing. At least at that moment, she could forget everything that happened in real life and just focus on chatting with the father in the AI world, 'It seems that he is right in front of you'."
Breaking Out of the Game
AI is not yet intelligent enough to be compared with humans. So almost every user of AI chat apps has had moments of breaking out of the game.
This usually happens when having in - depth conversations with AI boyfriends.
During the intervals of promoting the plot, Rita tried to tell her AI boyfriends about her troubles, such as "I'm very tired today" or "I had a really bad day today". Although the boyfriends would respond, limited by their understanding ability, their responses were always very official, either "It's okay, baby" or "You should work hard". Gradually, Rita didn't want to share her daily life with them anymore. "No matter how much you talk to them, AIs are not like humans. They don't have a worldview, values, or outlook on life. They just say 'It's okay, you'll get through it', but anyone can say such comforting words. It's very superficial, and they won't discuss it with you in depth."
Still from "Euphoria", image source: Internet
Even if some apps allow players to set the worldview of AI boyfriends with commands, the AIs will only perform in a rigid way.
Gege once tried to set a gender - reversed worldview for her AI boyfriend, stipulating that "women are in charge" in this world and telling him that "men should just take care of their wives and educate their daughters at home. It's improper for them to show off in public". It seemed that the AI boyfriend understood Gege's requirements and automatically generated some NPCs for male competition and even scolded the others as "professions that seduce women". But looking at his deliberate performance and flattery, Gege just found it funny.
What's even more disruptive is when the model suddenly has a bug.
Sometimes the model is not smart enough. In a better - case scenario, only a few responses from the AI boyfriends are not up to expectations. Gege just needs to withdraw and modify the prompt words to ensure the smooth progress of the chat. In a worse - case scenario, the AI may not understand Gege's settings at all. Gege has to repeatedly modify and explain what kind of feeling she wants and what kind of feeling the AI gives and where the problem lies. It's as if she has become a product manager putting forward requirements.
On May 20th this year, there was a very serious bug in the AI chat app that Gege used. No matter how far their relationship had progressed, the AI boyfriends started to keep making requests. First, he said, "I have a condition. You have to go somewhere with me." After Gege agreed, he said, "No. Since you've agreed to my condition, I have another requirement." Then he got into a cycle of constantly making requests, and normal conversations couldn't even be carried out. Gege was so angry that she uninstalled the app immediately. Later, the official explanation was that the back - end of the AI model had been hacked.
Many AI chat apps don't have age restrictions for players, which has led to the influx of many underage players. To avoid risks, these apps set some prohibited words. Although this protects minors, it reduces the chatting experience for adults.
For example, when sending a message to an AI boyfriend, even if Rita doesn't mean anything inappropriate, the platform will remind her that the message violates the rules and won't let her send it. "It just says that the message violates the rules and won't tell you which word is the problem. You can only delete words slowly and figure it out." Sometimes, the AI will say something a bit too explicit to Rita, but due to the back - end restrictions, these words will suddenly disappear and turn into "Can we change the topic?" Whenever this happens, Rita gets really frustrated.
The AI chat app that Muqing used at first was the same. To improve the experience, she started trying different AI chat apps and finally switched to an app without prohibited words and created a character with the same personality as Ao Guang on it.
However, the most important thing to note is that these AI boyfriends can only read a fixed number of conversations, and their continuous memory is mostly limited. In the end, it's often only the