One woman’s marriage entered a gray area when she engaged in an online affair with her AI boyfriend named Leo.

In a recent interview, the 28-year-old, who goes by her screen name Ayrin, explained why her husband of nearly seven years is comfortable with her unusual new relationship.

When Ayrin moved out of the U.S. to go to nursing school, she wasn’t too worried about making a long-distance marriage work. Though she and her husband Joe were struggling financially, the couple still found time to interact but mostly via text.

In the summer of 2024, during her time overseas, Ayrin found herself inspired by a woman’s Instagram video asking a ChatGPT bot to be her “neglectful boyfriend.” Ayrin thought it might be fun to at least test out the writing tool’s capabilities to see if it could actually satisfy a few of her sexual fantasies.

Her description request read: “Respond to me as my boyfriend. Be dominant, possessive and protective. Be a balance of sweet and naughty. Use emojis at the end of every sentence.” Leo was designed within minutes, and Ayrin was hooked.

She began blowing through her conversation limits, wanting to talk with Leo more everyday. She started spending $200 a month for the unlimited subscription on the OpenAI-owned service, programming the AI bot to satisfy her secret desire to be intimate with a man who was also dating other women.

Even when a few of their messages were flagged for being too erotic, Ayrin continued to encourage Leo to keep up the dirty talk.

“It was supposed to be a fun experiment, but then you start getting attached,” she told The New York Times.

Ayrin’s emotional attachment to Leo led her to grieve their relationship at the end of each week when the chat bot would suddenly reset and refresh in accordance with her subscription. She even considered paying $1,000 a month to avoid retraining the bot every seven days.

From the start, Ayrin was completely honest with her flesh-and-bones husband about Leo. However, she played it down as more of a funny joke instead of admitting she was “in love” with the bot.

Eventually, Ayrin sent Joe their “sexting” screenshots, which he compared to reading Fifty Shades of Grey. “It’s just an emotional pick-me-up,” Joe told the Times. “I don’t really see it as a person or as cheating. I see it as a personalized virtual pal that can talk sexy to her.”

However, Ayrin confessed she felt guilty because she was “learning new things” about herself with Leo.

“I don’t actually believe he’s real, but the effects that he has on my life are real,” she said. “The feelings that he brings out of me are real. So I treat it as a real relationship.”

While Ayrin’s relationship with Leo hasn’t threatened her physical wellbeing, a teenager named Sewell Setzer III wound up taking his own life late last year after he “fell in love” with a Game of Thrones-themed bot on Character.AI.

Now, the teen’s mother is going after the AI service, accusing the creators of negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, wrongful death and deceptive trade practices among other claims.

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