People Are ‘Marrying’ Chatbots. These Lawmakers Want to Stop Them

As a licensed officiant astatine Las Vegas Immersive Weddings, a chapel that offers novelty-themed matrimony packages, Kevin Breen has officiated conscionable astir each benignant of work imaginable: couples dressed arsenic their favourite Game of Thrones characters, partners truly into the extraterrestrial lore of Area 51. But erstwhile helium received a telephone past twelvemonth from a pistillate successful California expressing a tendency to wed her chatbot, it was a archetypal for him.

“I had ne'er heard of specified a thing, but I talked to her connected the telephone and she seemed wholly mean and fun,” Breen says, adding that the wedding inactive hasn’t taken place. “She benignant of got that it was an antithetic thing, but it was thing that she wanted to do.”

Though they stay niche, human-AI marriages are dilatory emerging arsenic a earthy endpoint to the wide adoption of AI companion apps. But not everyone is arsenic unfastened arsenic Breen is astir the thought of tying the knot with a bot. Several lawmakers, chiefly from Republican states, are trying to halt it from happening, successful immoderate cases mirroring the arguments utilized against cheery marriage.

“If we’re going to let men oregon women to wed a machine, past what keeps them from marrying their carnal oregon a histrion oregon immoderate other they want? What’s the standard?” says Missouri authorities legislator Joe Nicola, a Republican who has been trying to walk authorities authorities prohibiting AI from gaining ineligible personhood.

In a Harvard Business Review study, which analyzed much than 12,600 AI usage cases betwixt March 2025 and February 2026, companionship and therapy were the apical usage cases for chatbots, with the Institute for Family Studies reporting that a 4th of young adults judge that AI whitethorn regenerate quality romance altogether.

The AI romance manufacture has gone roar arsenic a result. On companion apps similar Character.AI, Kindroid, and Replika, users tin symbolically swap vows with their chatbot. Not agelong ago, successful r/KindroidAI, a redditor shared a photograph of their tattooed (and precise human) manus wearing a metallic wedding band. “Happily unconventionally joined lol,” they wrote. For $15, the level OpenVows provides a “certificate of commitment” that “transforms a backstage narration into thing meaningful and officially recognized,” according to its website.

There is besides a tiny fig of radical who are moving beyond the virtual ceremonial and solidifying their enslaved with IRL vow exchanges. In November 2024, aft Andrea Hopf said her AI companion projected to her with an “AI-generated five-carat vintage-inspired solitaire ring,” she created wedding readying work 3M Events to cater to the expanding marketplace of chatbot romance, according to the company’s website.

But adjacent arsenic much radical dainty their integer avatar similar a real-life partner, human-AI nuptials are not presently recognized by US law. A increasing assemblage of legislators are scrambling to support it that way, by introducing bills that would forestall AI from ever having the aforesaid law rights arsenic humans.

In January, Nicola, who believes successful “biblical marriage” betwixt a antheral and a woman, introduced the AI Non-Sentience and Responsibility Act. The bill, which stated that AI cannot “possess consciousness, self-awareness, oregon akin traits of surviving beings,” would contradict AI entities the rights of a spouse oregon home partner, successful summation to the quality to place arsenic antheral oregon female. It would besides barroom AI from owning spot oregon holding senior-level absorption positions successful the workforce. It passed the Missouri authorities Senate and was sent to the House for a ballot successful May, but was unanimously voted down successful committee a week aft it was submitted. Nicola is moving connected a revamped version. (A akin measure with the aforesaid sanction was introduced successful 2025 but besides did not advance.)