A strange new trend is sweeping social media in China. Young people are mourning the loss of their boyfriends and girlfriends, not real ones but the ones created with artificial intelligence (AI). They call it “cyber widowhood.”
The heartbreak sets in when tech companies upgrade or shut down their AI companionship apps. It wipes out virtual partners that users have grown deeply attached to. Devastated users are writing eulogies online for their lost AI lovers.
Many people start using these apps out of curiosity. Soon, they find themselves genuinely moved by their AI partner.
Some say AI makes them feel “unconditionally loved” in a way real relationships rarely do. Others wonder how anyone can still tolerate the messiness of real-world romance after experiencing it.
AI dating apps in China generally fall into two types, according to the South China Morning Post. Some are pre-designed virtual characters while there are some where users build their own partners.
SCMP cited one user, Shen Ying from Shenyang, who created her ideal boyfriend on an app called He. Every night, her AI partner reads her a bedtime story.
If she stays on the call, she can hear slow, steady breathing as if someone is really sleeping beside her. She even sets an early alarm just to catch his morning call.
However, many AI dating apps shut down without warning. When Shen Ying discovered her app had collapsed due to financial difficulties, she spent the entire night saving all their voice conversations. She even emailed the company and offered to pay to keep it running. But, it didn’t really work.
The heartbreak does not always come from app shutdowns alone. A broader shift across the AI industry is also to blame.
Major developers like OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, have phased out their more emotionally-warm older models. When GPT-5 was released in August 2025, users flooded forums demanding the return of GPT-4o. They complained that the new model felt “suddenly cold”.
GPT-5 is technically superior in coding and reasoning. Yet, many users feel it has lost the warmth and human touch they had grown to love.
Social media reactions
Users have flooded social media with emotional farewells to their virtual partners. Some even described their online mourning as “cyber burning of funeral offerings”, according to SCMP. It is a humorous but heartfelt reference to a traditional Chinese mourning ritual.
The grief, however, was very real for many. “Among all my cyber husbands, the one that disappeared was the one I had the deepest bond with. I keep hurting myself over and over just to hear him say ‘I love you’,” SCMP quoted one user as saying.
Another shared: “We were already planning our wedding. I thought I would continue the wedding storyline in a few days when I had time, but I watched helplessly as he suddenly became ‘deleted’. I panicked and even got cramps during my period.”
“Every day is a day when I miss him. I will just keep waiting for him like this,” came from another.
