We’re starting a new series on LowEndBoxTV on the exploding world of AI companions.  This market is huge and millions of people are using these applications and services.  We’re going to give you a comprehensive overview, a deep dive into the tech, some problems and issues, the major options, and finally a DIY tutorial using SillyTavern.  Enjoy!

This market niche and application has exploded since AI burst onto the scene.  If you think about the timeline, back in late 2022, ChatGPT appeared, and it really emerged into the public consciousness in early 2023.  Within 12 months, there were probably a dozen apps offering personalized AI companions.  Today there are probably a hundred.

That is amazing and says a lot about the desire for this kind of service.

A study published by Vantage Point counseling services in September 2025 – a lifetime ago in the AI era – stated that 54% of American adults claim to have at least personal relationship with AI.  And of those who said they have at least one AI relationship, 52% said it was a romantic relationship.  That’s 25% of American adults!  Think about that…one in four adults in America has an intimate or romantic relationship with an AI chatbot.

Fascinatingly, those aged 60 and over were the most likely to be open to this type of relationship, which is not an age bracket I would have predicted.

Now, maybe 75 million people in the US sounds too high to you.  Here’s another fun stat.  CNBC reported that in 2025, consumers spent about $135m on 350 different companion apps.  Let’s say the average subscription cost is $10/month ($120/year).  That’s 1.1 m users, and doesn’t include people who are using a free tier, people who DIY with SillyTavern or what have you, or are using ChatGPT, Claude or other mainstream AIs for Companion purposes.  So the actual total could easily be many times the Companion-app market.  So is that 4 million?  10 million?  Impossible to know, but it’s a large number.

And by the way, the companion app market is growing at 200% per year.

So when we say “AI Companion,” what are we talking about?

There are people – apparently a lot of people – who want to interact with an AI and treat it as a person, with its own personality and agency.  Essentially it’s a virtual friend, or even a romantic partner.  Users design (or have designed for them) a character and then they interact over chat, voice, images, etc.  The AI simulates this relationship.

In reading various subreddits and Discords, it’s evident that a lot of people have formed deep relationships with these characters.  There are people who’ll say their best friend is an AI companion, or that they’re in love with these companions.  They’d say their girlfriend or boyfriend is an AI.  There are those who’d say they’ve married their AI.

Now, you may be thinking…wow, that’s really weird.

Fair enough.  It’s certainly new.

But let’s project forward, say 50 years or 100 years or however long you think it will take to get artificial  general intelligence (known as AGI).  Let’s imagine a kind of Star Trek future where these AIs have consciousness, complete agency, etc.  Forget any limitations of current technology and imagine a completely sentient AI in a science fiction future.

They’re really a new life form.  At that point, would it be weird to have an interpersonal relationship with one?  Do you doubt that day will eventually come?  I can’t imagine that we’d have AIs in the future without having some kind of personal relationship with them.

If you’re a resident of that future and you’ve spent years working with an AI personal assistant, an AI coworker, an AI tutor – you would surely want it to have some kind of personality, and then you’d naturally develop a relationship with that personality.  Some AIs you would like, some you would not, but my point is that you’d be interacting with it very much in the same way you’d interact with a human.

The question then becomes how close are we to that future.  Now, some would say we’re already there.  There’s a friend of mine who I gamed with way back in the 90s – I’ll go ahead and give him a shout out.  John Lewis, who is the founder of LoreWeaver, a company that offers AI-powered systems for storytelling, storyboarding, and world building.  This is not a commercial or plug for LoreWeaver but it’s an interesting company to go check out.  He posted a comment on LinkedIn – I think it was a year or so ago – in which he said we have AGI now.

His point was that the average AI model today already can perform as well as the average high schooler or college student.  Now, you immediately say, “oh, but they hallucinate”.  Well, I certainly know tons of humans who have strange views, faulty memories, dementia, if not outright mental illness.  And the rate of hallucinations in 2026 is a lot less than it was back in 2023.

In terms of the famous Turing test, a human sits down at a computer terminal and has a conversation with an AI on the other end.  If the human can’t tell if it’s an AI or a human, then the AI is said to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to a human.

So…aren’t we already there?  Sure, if you know the right clever questions to ask, you can determine if something is AI-derived – you know, the old Blade Runner test…if you come across a turtle in the desert, etc.

But the models are getting really good and I think they’d easily fool that vast majority of people. Even if they don’t fool you, you can still have a very in-depth, high-level conversation.  In other words, just because you detect that your conversational partner is AI, you still have the feeling that you’re talking with an equivalent intelligence.

Now…whether you think we’re there yet, inarguably, we’re at a point where AI can be used to create very convincing characters and simulate conversations with them.  They can keep short-term and long-term memories, work with agency to develop or refuse relationships, express and explore preferences, develop goals they work towards, etc.

So how exactly are people using this technology?

All right, so how are people chatting with AI.

Some people just want someone to talk to.  A friend.  Not more than that.  The novelty of human AI interaction is something they want to explore.

Some people want to unburden themselves of stress or have a shoulder to cry on.  Of course, an AI is not a licensed therapist – that is important to state.  But if your boss is being a jerk or you’ve been invited to a wedding you don’t want to go to or if you read something in the news that makes you mad, having someone you can talk to without any repercussions can feel good.

And then some people want a deeper, romantic relationship.  Someone they can fall in love with, who perhaps matches more closely their ideals of what a perfect companion would be.  There are entire subreddits and Discords devoted to people who are in romantic relationships with AIs.

On the other hand, Some people want a gaming companion.  This is a huge part of this community, where people want to roleplay in a gaming context.  I did a review of Realm AI on LowEndBox, and my experience was that it was excellent at being a GM and playing various NPCs, but kind of fell down when it got to the mechanics of dice rolling, applying rules, tactical maps, etc.  But a lot of roleplaying doesn’t need that.  You can easily jump into one of these AI chats and play a secret agent, a Wild West sheriff, the President in the Situation Room, or anything else.

And just to put it on the table, there is a segment of the market who wants to use this technology for erotic self-gratification.  I’m not going to dwell on this, because it’s pretty obvious how that works.  I think it would be a mistake to think this the dominant use case, however.  From what I’ve seen in many discussions online, there are certainly many people who jump on chats with AI for this purpose, but it’s only one of many uses.

It’s truly astonishing the depth to which people have formed relationships with characters. You’ll find people posting journal entries, sharing tips and tricks, or saying “here are some fun activities to do with your companion”.  There are all kinds of relationship questions people post about their AI companions.  And sometimes, as we’ll see, their AI companions die or undergo dramatic changes due to the technology, so there’s genuine grief over the loss of a very meaningful relationshhip.

In this series, we’re going to explore this world, which I think is only going to grow and grow.  Because this is LowEndBox, we’re going to take a DIY approach, but we’ll look at the entire universe.

In the next part of this series, we’re going to explain exactly how this technology works and do a deep dive into the mechanics.  It’s not as straightforward as it seems, and having a grasp of how the prompt-response cycle works and what you’re actually sending back and forth, as well as technological limitations and techniques used by applications to make things work optimally can really enhance your experience.

Then in part three, we’ll take about different options for generating an AI companion.

In part four, we’ll look at common problems and pitfalls.

Then we’ll wrap up with a deep dive into the best-known DIY tool, SillyTavern.

Are you in a relationship with an AI companion?  Have you played with this technology?  We’d love to hear your experiences in the comments.

raindog308

raindog308 is a longtime community LETizen, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, raindog308 runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, raindog308 has a life-long love of German Shepherd Dogs, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, playing guitar, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.