A look at the rise of AI companionship apps; a researcher found 206 on Apple's App Store and 253 on Google Play, with a total of 220M+ downloads as of July 2025
1. The first trend is a decline in people using dating apps like Tinder & Bumble. — 2. The rise of AI companion (aka AI girlfriend) apps. — 3. Using ChatGPT to write messages to people you're dating. … Paul Rietschka / @prietschka : Danger of using an LLM to badly simulate companionship to one side, we'll look back at this in a few years and shake our heads at how silly it all was. — No way there's a business model here, no way the compute consumption of a “companion” like this isn't immense. @hypervisible.blacksky.app : “Replika is one of an estimated 206 AI companion apps on the App Store and 253 on Google Play...”