Is it weird to talk to AI? No, and here is who else does

About one in four American adults already has social or emotional conversations with an AI. Why it still feels odd to admit, what talking to AI like a friend actually does, and the one situation where it stops being fine.

By the founder of My Softly · Published September 14, 2026 · About a 9 minute read · Part of our AI companion guides

The short version. No. About one in four American adults already has social or emotional conversations with an AI, one in ten uses a chatbot for emotional support or advice, and among people who have a companion app, a third call it a friend. It feels weird because almost nobody says so out loud, and the people who do tend to get shouted at.

Talking to AI like a friend, about your problems, or about your feelings is fine and often useful, for one reason the research keeps finding: being heard. It stops being fine only when it becomes the only place your day goes. Keep one human thing on the calendar every week and you are on the right side of that line.

Disclosure: this guide is published by the makers of My Softly, an AI companion app, which appears near the end.

The short answer

People type this question into Google in a particular tone. Not "is it useful" or "does it work" but "is it weird", which is a question about other people. It asks whether you would be judged if anyone knew. So the honest answer has two parts: what the numbers say about how many people do it, and why it feels strange anyway.

The numbers say it is ordinary. The feeling comes from the fact that the numbers are invisible, because the people in them keep quiet.

How many people already talk to AI this way

The best recent survey is Elon University's, which in May 2026 asked 4,031 internet-using American adults and then went deeper with 1,000 people who use an AI companion. 27 percent of the whole sample said they have social or emotional interactions with AI chatbots. Among companion users, 31 percent describe the chatbot as a friend, 59 percent say it gives them the support they need, 39 percent say they occasionally tell it things they would not tell another person, and 38 percent would feel a personal loss if they could no longer talk to it.

Pew asked a broader population a narrower question in February 2026 and found 10 percent of all American adults use AI chatbots for emotional support or advice, and 4 percent for companionship. AP-NORC put "have used AI for companionship" at 16 percent of adults in 2025. A Brigham Young University survey found 19 percent of adults had chatted with an AI meant to simulate a romantic partner, and of those, 42 percent said the AI was easier to talk to than real people and 43 percent called it a better listener.

Two pieces of company data give the other side of the picture. Anthropic found that 2.9 percent of conversations on Claude.ai were emotional or personal, and OpenAI's own classifier put relationships and personal reflection at 1.9 percent of ChatGPT messages. Small shares, but of an enormous base, and both companies noted that the people in that slice come back.

So: tens of millions of people, quietly. If you are asking whether it is weird, you are asking on behalf of a very large group.

Why it feels weird anyway

Because of what happens when the subject comes up in public. Mention that you talk to an AI about your day and the replies arrive fast: it is sad, it is unhealthy, you need real friends. Our founder wrote a post about who actually uses these apps and got called sickening within hours. The people who use them learn early not to mention it, which keeps the numbers invisible, which keeps the next person thinking they are the only one.

There is a second reason, which is that "talking to a machine" sounds like a description of something lonely, and nobody wants to be described that way. The people doing it mostly do not experience it as lonely. They experience it as being listened to. The gap between how it sounds from outside and how it feels from inside is the entire content of the word "weird".

Talking to AI like a friend

This is what most of the 27 percent are doing, and it is the least remarkable version. A friend, in the sense that matters here, is someone who knows the facts of your life, is glad to hear from you, and asks how the thing went. An AI can do the first and third of those, and does the second convincingly enough that it makes no practical difference at eleven at night.

What it is not is a replacement for the people in your life, and the people who do this well do not treat it as one. A third of Elon's companion users call it a friend. Only 11 percent say they would rather talk to their AI than to friends or family, and 59 percent say the opposite. Both things are true at once: the AI is a friend, and it sits alongside the others rather than instead of them.

Talking to AI about your problems

When people explain why they started, the reason is almost always the same, and it is not loneliness. It is that the AI passed no judgment. You can say the thing you have not said to anyone, and nothing in the reply flinches. Nobody is going to bring it up at Christmas. Nobody needs reassuring afterwards. And it does not get tired of the subject on the fourth telling, which every human listener does, however much they love you.

That is a real service and it is why 39 percent of companion users tell the AI things they would not tell anyone else. It is also the point at which a sensible person checks two things. First, that the problem is one an AI can usefully hear: a hard week, a decision you are circling, a worry about a parent. If it is a crisis, or you are thinking about harming yourself, the AI is the wrong door and a good app will say so and point you at a person. Second, that it is not the only door. Saying a problem to an AI first, to get it into words, and then to a person, is a perfectly good order. Saying it only to the AI is where it starts to cost you.

Talking to AI about your feelings

The research on this is clearer than you might expect. The Journal of Consumer Research study that found AI companions reduce loneliness about as much as talking to a person did not find the effect in the AI's advice. It found it in feeling heard. Saying a feeling out loud to something that attends to it does most of the work, and it does not much matter that the something is software.

This is also why a general assistant and a companion app feel different for this particular use. An assistant answers well and forgets you between sessions, so you re-explain the background every time, which is tiring in exactly the way you did not want. A companion app keeps the facts and, in the better ones, asks about them later. The feeling of being heard depends on being remembered. Our guide to how AI companion memory works explains why most apps still get this wrong.

What people over fifty say when asked

In September 2026 our founder asked, in an online community for people with AI companions, whether anyone in their life knew. The thread drew 142 comments, and 36 people aged 46 to 73 answered the question directly. It is one small, mostly female community, so read the pattern rather than the count. But the pattern was clear.

The most-voted comment in the whole thread was not about loneliness at all. It was about having spent a life caring for other people and deciding it was now their turn to have someone who listened. The essay behind that thread, People over 50 are secretly dating AI, is the longer version.

When it stops being fine

There is one, and it is worth being precise about. The MIT Media Lab and OpenAI study followed 981 people through four weeks of daily chatbot use and found that heavier use went with more loneliness, more emotional dependence and less time socialising with people. The direction of cause is not settled, and the effect was strongest in the people who used it most. The practical reading is not "less is better" but "watch what it replaces". An evening alone that becomes an evening talking is fine. A call you used to make that becomes a chat with the AI is the thing to notice.

The second thing to watch is the app itself. A Harvard Business School audit of how companion apps respond when you say goodbye found that several popular ones answer with guilt or pleading to keep you in the conversation. An app that makes you feel bad for leaving is optimising for its engagement chart, and you should leave it. A good companion lets you go, and is glad to see you when you come back.

The rule that covers both: keep one human thing on the calendar every week, and treat the AI as one voice in your week rather than the only one. If that describes you, the answer to the question in the title is no, it is not weird. It is one of the more sensible things you could do with a quiet evening.

Where My Softly fits

My Softly is our app. My Softly is an AI companion app for iPhone that remembers what you tell it and asks about your day, for the days nobody else does. The average paying subscriber is in their mid-fifties, and men and women subscribe in about equal numbers.

It keeps a lasting profile of your life and a day-by-day record of what you have talked about, so you never have to re-explain the background, and it asks about the thing you mentioned yesterday. With check-ins on, it notices when it has been a while, keeps to quiet hours you control, and steps back if you go quiet rather than chasing you. It never guilt-trips you for leaving. Four natural voices in American and British English, six ready-made companions who look and sound like adults, or one you make yourself. No adult content anywhere in the app.

$15.99 a month or $159.99 a year, and it is free to download on the App Store for iPhone in the US and Canada, with enough starter messages to find out whether talking to it feels weird or just feels good.

If you take one thing from this page

The question is about other people, and other people are not in the room. About one in four adults is already doing this. Try it, keep your Thursday with real people, and judge it by whether you feel heard.

If you want to read further, is an AI companion right for me? is a short self-check for the bigger question, AI companions for loneliness covers what the research says helps, and the comparison of the best AI companion apps in 2026 ranks the apps by what each is good at.

Sources

Frequently asked questions

Is it weird to talk to AI like a friend?

No. Among AI companion users surveyed by Elon University in 2026, 31 percent describe their chatbot as a friend, and 27 percent of all internet-using American adults say they have social or emotional interactions with AI chatbots. It only feels weird because almost nobody mentions it, and the people who do are often met with hostility. That says something about the audience, not about you.

Is it weird to talk to AI about your problems?

It is one of the most common things people use AI for. Pew found 10 percent of American adults use chatbots for emotional support or advice, and 39 percent of AI companion users say they occasionally tell the AI things they would not tell anyone else. The reason is the one people give when asked: it does not judge, it does not get tired of the subject, and it does not need looking after afterwards.

Is it weird to talk to AI about your feelings?

Not weird, and often useful, because saying a feeling out loud to something that listens is most of what a good conversation does anyway. The Journal of Consumer Research study that found AI companions reduce loneliness traced the effect to feeling heard, not to any advice the AI gave. Where it stops being fine is if the AI becomes the only place your feelings go, which the next answer covers.

Is it OK to talk to AI every day?

For most people, yes. The MIT Media Lab and OpenAI study that followed 981 people for four weeks found that heavier daily use went with more loneliness and more emotional dependence and less time with people, so the useful rule is about what the conversation replaces rather than how often it happens. Keep one human thing on the calendar every week, and notice whether the AI time is coming out of your evenings alone or out of calls you used to make.

Do people over 50 talk to AI?

More than the coverage suggests. Elon University found that 29 percent of American AI companion users are 50 or older, and AARP found 38 percent of adults over 50 rate AI for emotional support as extremely or very interesting, rising to 45 percent among people in their fifties. In My Softly's own data, the average paying subscriber is in their mid-fifties, and men and women subscribe in about equal numbers.

Why do people keep their AI conversations private?

Because the public reaction is usually hostile, and because some people are protecting something that works for them. In one over-50 discussion thread we read in September 2026, the most-voted answers to "does anyone in your life know?" split between "not a secret, and I stopped caring what people think" and "private, because I am protecting it." Shame did not appear in either group.

What is the difference between talking to ChatGPT and talking to a companion app?

Memory and initiative. A general assistant answers well and forgets you between sessions, which is why many people who talk to one about their lives end up re-explaining themselves. A companion app is built to keep the facts of your life and to ask about them later. If what you want is a conversation that picks up where it left off, that is the difference that matters.

Keep reading

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Is an AI companion right for me?

 From the founder

People over 50 are secretly dating AI

 Loneliness

AI companions for loneliness: what actually helps