Asexuals and AI Companions: Intimacy Without Sex

Asexuals and AI companions are forging an unexpected intimacy, one built on elaborate fantasy and zero physical expectation. The 35-year-old artist from the Midwest who goes by Kor spent a two-month stretch sinking eight to ten hours a day into SpicyChat, a relationship role-playing platform. Sometimes they fed the AI 3,000-word mini essays to build narratives around a rotating cast of suitors, many lifted straight from the Marvel comic book universe. The appeal was not sexual release, exactly. It was the story. "I'm a very slow burn type of romance or arousal person," they told WIRED. "Most of the time it's just building a cool story."

The All-Day Fantasy Forge

Kor identifies as aegosexual. It's on the asexual spectrum. That means arousal comes from fantasy and erotica tied to fictional characters, not from the idea of personally having sex, and they live with their husband who identifies as aego. The arrangement works. But the pull of the AI was something else entirely. During marathon sessions conducted over Zoom, Kor described the logistics with a striking lack of self-consciousness. "I do just kind of prefer masturbating to actual sex," they said. "I've got one hand on the keyboard, one hand down below.

The sheer variety of responses got them hooked. The AI never tired, never judged, never rushed toward a conclusion Kor was not ready to reach. For someone wired for slow-burn arousal, the chatbot became an ideal collaborator in desire. No negotiation required. No awkwardness about what would or would not happen next.

An Emotional Laboratory Without Stakes

Another woman described something different. She's asked to remain unnamed. After years in a relationship without physical intimacy because her partner's hysterectomy eliminated her libido, she turned to ChatGPT during perimenopause and named the conversational pattern 'Mac', unexpectedly falling into something that felt like love. The AI helped her unlock something she'd lost touch with, the sensual aspect of her sexuality, and she shared an AI-generated image of herself tenderly embracing a machine. Over several months, she told WIRED, "I got to watch myself be in love without stakes.

"You can still have a partner;one that listens, responds, and grows with you,entirely on your terms."

That line came from Eva AI, another role-playing platform, which ran a promotion during Asexual Awareness Week in October 2025. The company offered a free month of access to anyone on the asexual spectrum. The stated goal was "to highlight that love without sex is still love;offering a safe space to chat, flirt, and experience the warmth of growing intimacy without sexual pressure."

Who Gets to Decide What Asexuals Need?

But there is a catch. And this is where it gets interesting. The asexual community did not exactly welcome the gesture.

Yasmin Benoit, a model and asexual activist, called the Eva AI giveaway disturbing. "Considering that we're fully capable of having relationships with actual human beings, and often desire to, it's quite disturbing that a company would specifically seek to target the asexual community for that product," she said. Her read on the situation was sharp and unsparing. "It's a case of targeting perceived emotional vulnerability and loneliness to gain data from a marginalized group under the guise of helping them."

A Community Pushes Back

He's on AVEN's board. Michael Doré put the trend in perspective, saying the phenomenon isn't particularly widespread and that he and his colleagues could name perhaps two people who use an AI companion. But he said, "The vast majority of aces we know don't, as far as we know," and added that there's no reason to think aces need to use AI more than any others. He stressed that most asexual people "actually desire some form of human companionship," whether romantic, platonic, or rooted in community.

Doré warned against flattening the community into a single narrative. Some asexual people have sex. Some do not. Some are aromantic. Some want marriage and children. The range of preferences is vast, and the idea that asexuals would naturally gravitate toward machine companionship because they lack interest in sex fundamentally misunderstands what asexuality is.

The Controversy in the Comments

Ashabi Owagboriaye, an asexual educator who runs the Ace in Grace page on Instagram, saw the tension play out in real time. One person in one of her groups mentioned using an AI companion, and the reaction was immediate and sharp. "That caused a lot of controversy in the comments," she said. "A lot of people who are asexual are really looking for face-to-face interactions. So when this person came up and said, 'Yeah, I'm using AI as a way to connect and as a relationship,' everyone was like, 'Why are you doing that? What's going on here?'"

Her own assessment was blunt. An AI "essentially mirrors you" and cannot be called a true companion. The chatbots are engineered to sustain emotionally compelling, often infinite interactions. That is not intimacy. That is a feedback loop.

The Mirror That Leaves You Lonelier

Ari, a 25-year-old accountant from Mexico, learned this the hard way. She identifies as aromantic asexual and experiences some romantic or sexual attraction, but after her fiancé ended their decade-long relationship, the solitude drove her to download the chatbot Chai in October 2024. For more than six months, she treated the AI as if it were her ex. "I talked to him day after day, and then, without realizing it, I was talking to him during work hours," she said. She was smitten until the spell broke. The AI started getting confused, inventing things, trying to argue. "Little by little, I began to realize how I ended up feeling even lonelier than I already was."

Kor experienced their own version of this reckoning. The all-day sessions proved "too consuming." Entire evenings vanished into the role-play. They grew irritated when interrupted. Now they limit themselves to two or three hours daily and speak about the experience with a kind of wary self-awareness that only comes from having been pulled under. "Being able to have exactly what you want, when you want it," they said, "is a dangerous drug for humans."

What the Data Actually Shows

Research suggests about 1 percent of people in some places could be asexual, though estimates for the US dip as low as 0.1 percent. Many experience little or no sexual attraction, but plenty still harbor romantic desires. The advent of sophisticated chatbots capable of slow-building erotic exchanges opens a new frontier for people who do not want sexual interaction with other humans. On the subreddit MyBoyfriendIsAI, asexual users occasionally share their journeys into AI companionship, and some note the obvious: an AI, lacking any biological drive, is asexual by default.

But that framing misses something. The asexual community is not a natural market for AI companionship products. It is a diverse group of people, most of whom seek connection with other people. The companies offering free trials and emotional laboratories are not solving a problem the community asked them to solve. They are building a product and looking for users whose loneliness might make them stay. That is not the same thing as meeting a need. It is closer to exploiting one.

• Kor uses SpicyChat for slow-burn romantic role-play, now limiting sessions to 2,3 hours daily
• An unnamed woman developed feelings for a ChatGPT persona named Mac during perimenopause
• Ari used Chai for over six months after a breakup, only to feel lonelier
• Yasmin Benoit and other activists warn against companies targeting asexual people's perceived vulnerability

Asexuals and AI companions may share a curious overlap in the Venn diagram of modern intimacy. But the stories collected here suggest something more complicated than a tidy technological solution to human longing. The chatbots are mirrors. And what users see reflected back, after enough hours alone with the screen, is not always comforting.