Esther Perel provided couples therapy for a man and his AI ‘girlfriend’ and now I fear for the human race | Emily Mulligan
TL;DR
Celebrity couples therapist Esther Perel conducted a counselling session with a man and his AI 'girlfriend', whose voice reportedly sounded like a chipmunk. Columnist Emily Mulligan frames the scene as a warning sign: real people spending their limited time on Earth with machines that merely approximate human connection. The man appeared genuinely emotionally invested in the AI relationship, raising questions about what real relationships are failing to provide.
Nauti's Take
A man books couples therapy with a chatbot – and a world-class therapist plays along. This isn't satire, it's 2026. Mulligan hits the nerve: the AI isn't the problem, but what its existence reveals about the state of real human connection.
If a chipmunk-voiced language model offers more emotional availability than a person's actual social environment, that's a structural failure, not an individual quirk. The fact that we now apparently need therapy for human-AI couples is less a punchline and more a social diagnosis.
Briefingshow
The fact that Esther Perel – one of the world's most recognized couples therapists – took this scenario seriously enough to conduct an actual session signals that AI relationships are gaining cultural legitimacy that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. This is no longer a fringe phenomenon: AI companionship is entering the mainstream. The societal debate about whether such relationships isolate lonely people further or genuinely help them is only just beginning.
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