Just over half of American adults, 50.5%, now say a partner’s romantic or sexual relationship with an AI companion counts as cheating, according to a new nationwide survey published September 7, 2026 by AI Girlfriend Coach. The study, which screened out inconsistent responses from a larger pool, offers one of the clearest data points yet on where Americans are drawing the line on digital infidelity.
How the numbers break down
The survey, fielded August 26–27, 2026 through SurveyMonkey Audience, started with 2,150 completed responses and narrowed to 1,709 U.S. adults after removing 441 answers flagged for contradictory patterns. Results were census-balanced by age and gender, though not by region or household income.
Among the final sample, 33.4% said any romantic or sexual interaction with an AI chatbot or companion app should count as cheating, full stop. Another 17.1% took a narrower view, saying it only crosses the line once real emotional or sexual attachment develops. A separate 21.2% stopped short of calling it cheating outright but admitted they’d feel uncomfortable if a partner did it. Add the first two groups together and you get the 50.5% headline figure: a slim majority for whom an AI girlfriend or boyfriend is functionally an affair partner.
The people most open to AI romance are also the toughest judges
One finding cuts against the obvious assumption. Respondents who said they’re personally open to AI romance were far more likely to call a partner’s AI relationship cheating than people who oppose AI companionship altogether, at 73.0% versus 41.2%, per the same AI Girlfriend Coach data. In other words, familiarity with the technology doesn’t make people more permissive about it inside their own relationship — it may do the opposite, since people who understand how emotionally realistic these bots have become are less willing to write off the betrayal as harmless.
The survey also asked why people use AI companions in the first place. The largest share, 56.6%, cited companionship or fighting loneliness rather than romance. Only 10.3% said they turned to an AI partner specifically for affection, romance, or a sexual outlet — a reminder that most AI companion use isn’t framed by the users themselves as a relationship substitute, even if partners increasingly read it that way.
Independent coverage of the same dataset, including a summary from AI News, confirmed the 50.5% topline figure. The findings land as AI companion apps continue growing into a mainstream category rather than a niche one, and as couples therapists, courts, and now survey researchers all start grappling with a question relationship norms haven’t caught up to: what, exactly, counts as “someone else” when that someone else runs on a server.
