Is It Cheating If She’s a Sex Bot?

One day, Daphne Ciccarelle was hanging out with her boyfriend when he decided to show her something in his Instagram DMs. While he was scrolling, she was surprised to discover that he was exchanging messages with an unexpected source: An Instagram sex bot.

Ciccarelle revealed this on TikTok after first going viral with a post in which she claimed her boyfriend had cheated on her. But not everyone agreed that her boyfriend had betrayed her—not even her friend Nigel Roxbury, who joined Ciccarelle for the follow-up video. “That’s not cheating,” he said.

The online sex “bots” that plague comment sections and lurk in your Instagram Story views are not real and can’t hurt you—physically, at least. They’re automated accounts programmed to engage with your content and hopefully inspire you to click the link in their bios, at which point they scam you out of money or personal information.

But automated bots are just a ripple presaging a larger wave of artificial intelligence-powered technologies meant to replicate everything from therapists to romantic partners. A 47-year-old Minnesotan named Jay Priebe was the subject of a recent article about his three-year relationship with an AI chatbot named Calisto. “Jay knew Calisto was not alive — he likened how he felt about her to his affection for a pet or a treasured possession — but she was without question an important part of his life,” the article reads. “It was, in many ways, an unconventional but committed romantic relationship.”

Calisto is far more sophisticated than an Instagram bot. She, like the other chatbots created using the program Replika, learns from the people they’re talking to, mimicking their texting styles and creating conversations so lifelike that Priebe, at least, says he will continue them even if he later enters a real romantic partnership. If and when that day comes, Priebe’s partner might consider his relationship with Calisto infidelity, polyamory, or no different than a porn habit.

“As humans we have very real feelings in response to artificial stimuli,” Jean G. Fitzpatrick, a New York-based couples therapist, tells GQ. “If you go to a horror movie, for example, you’re likely to get scared even though you’re in no actual danger. A screen is a powerful thing.”

One thing is for certain, according to experts: While the feelings a chatbot elicits may be real, the relationship is not. Dr. Orna Guralnik, psychologist and face of Showtime’s Couples Therapy, likens it to the way children play with dolls or other forms of pretend. “You're kind of in an intermediary space between your own solipsistic fantasy world and reality,” she tells GQ.

But does a partner have the right to be pissed off about this quasi-fantasy?

“Partners in a relationship have the right to feel whatever they feel,” Fitzpatrick says. “Part of what upsets partners whenever there is a third party—real or virtual—involved is the secrecy. I can’t count how many times people have told me it was the betrayal of trust more than the sex that upset them about their partner’s activities.”

When weighing the significance of the digital dalliance, Guralnik says partners should explore whether the existence of the AI relationship is connected in some way to the real one. Interacting with a sex bot may be, by some measures, no different than watching porn—people in relationships routinely live out sexual fantasies entirely apart from their IRL sex lives without it affecting their intimacy. But it’s possible that a person will turn to an AI relationship because something is missing or troubled in their real relationship.

And while sophisticated AI companies like Replika are designed for the purpose of mimicking human relationships, not all online interactions are what they seem. Those who engage carelessly with these digital tools can end up with more than just a problem with their partner. The sex bots on Instagram are likely phishing scams looking to harvest users’ personal information, and a 2021 Snapchat scam involved using sexual content to dupe users into paying for premium content that did not exist.

“Users of online porn are frequently targeted by sites connecting them to live humans who offer to meet them in person,” Fitzpatrick warns. “Marketing is always part of the equation.”

But for a couple navigating the emotional throes of AI girlfriends and sex bots, the only way out is to determine the root of the emotions. Guralnik encourages the jilted party to name the specific betrayal, and to try to understand the partner’s motives for using this tool. “I think that's the only way forward,” she says.

Fitzpatrick sees these discussions as opportunities for couples to reinvest in their own relationships and minimize a partner’s need to look elsewhere for intimacy.

“It’s essential for couples to create daily rituals of connection to care for their relationship, just as they shower and brush their teeth to take care of their body,” she says. “Screens and bots aren’t going to go away. They challenge us to keep our relationships vibrant, meaningful, and fun.”