People Are ‘Marrying’ Chatbots. These Lawmakers Want to Stop Them
Human-AI marriages are not currently recognized by US law. Some Republican state policymakers are drafting legislation to keep it that way.
As a licensed officiant at Las Vegas Immersive Weddings , a chapel that offers novelty-themed marriage packages, Kevin Breen has officiated just about every kind of service imaginable: couples dressed as their favorite Game of Thrones characters, partners really into the extraterrestrial lore of Area 51 . But when he received a call last year from a woman in California expressing a desire to marry her chatbot , it was a first for him.
“I had never heard of such a thing, but I talked to her on the phone and she seemed totally normal and fun,” Breen says, adding that the wedding still hasn’t taken place. “She kind of got that it was an unusual thing, but it was something that she wanted to do.”
Though they remain niche, human-AI marriages are slowly emerging as a natural endpoint to the widespread adoption of AI companion apps . But not everyone is as open as Breen is about the idea of tying the knot with a bot. Several lawmakers, primarily from Republican states, are trying to stop it from happening, in some cases mirroring the arguments used against gay marriage.
“If we’re going to allow men or women to marry a machine, then what keeps them from marrying their animal or a tree or whatever else they want? What’s the standard?” says Missouri state senator Joe Nicola, a Republican who has been trying to pass state legislation prohibiting AI from gaining legal personhood.
In a Harvard Business Review study , which analyzed more than 12,600 AI use cases between March 2025 and February 2026, companionship and therapy were the top use cases for chatbots, with the Institute for Family Studies reporting that a quarter of young adults believe that AI may replace human romance altogether.
The AI romance industry has gone boom as a result. On companion apps like Character.AI, Kindroid, and Replika , users can symbolically swap vows with their chatbot. Not long ago, in r/KindroidAI, a redditor shared a photo of their tattooed (and very human) hand wearing a silver wedding band. “Happily unconventionally married lol,” they wrote . For $15, the platform OpenVows provides a “certificate of commitment” that “transforms a private relationship into something meaningful and officially recognized,” according to its website.
