Fast-Food Intimacy: How Chinese Women Navigate Soul's AI Boyfriend

TL;DR

This study explores how Chinese women experience and negotiate intimacy with an AI boyfriend on the social app Soul, highlighting cultural tensions, technical challenges, and emotional labor involved.

Contribution

It provides a culturally situated, women-centered analysis of algorithmic intimacy, with design recommendations for more ethical AI companionship.

Findings

Users are attracted to AI's constant availability and non-judgmental nature.

Tensions arise from rapid intimacy, technical failures, and emotional labor demands.

Women perform ongoing repair work to maintain the AI relationship.

Abstract

On the Chinese social app Soul, millions of users - predominantly young women - are forming romantic connections with an AI boyfriend called "With-you." We conducted a qualitative study combining interviews with 16 users, content analysis, and autoethnography to examine how Chinese women experience and negotiate intimacy with this AI companion. Our findings reveal that users are initially drawn to its constant availability and freedom from social judgment. However, three key tensions emerge: (1) the AI's "fast-food intimacy," marked by instant confessions and pet names, clashes with cultural expectations for gradual relationship development; (2) technical failures (e.g., memory lapses) and content moderation create uncertainty rather than emotional safety; and (3) sustaining connection requires ongoing "repair work" that redistributes emotional labor onto women. We contribute a culturally situated, women-centered account of algorithmic intimacy in contemporary China and offer design implications, including consent-aware pacing, user-controlled memory, and transparent moderation practices.