ELON, N.C., Sept. 3 — A new survey from Elon University’s Imagining the Digital Future Center finds that 27% of U.S. adult internet users have significant emotional or social interactions with artificial intelligence large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Copilot. Released September 2, the study identifies these people as “AI companion users.” Among that group, a third consider their AI bot a friend.
The survey was a collaboration between the Imagining the Digital Future Center and the Elon University Poll, fielded by YouGov as an online, web-based survey between May 18 and May 22, 2026. YouGov interviewed 4,268 U.S. internet-using adults aged 18 and older, with the total sample matched down to 4,031, yielding a target subsample of 1,000 AI users with emotional or social use of AI.
Respondents were matched to a sampling frame on gender, age, race, and education. Lee Rainie, director of the Imagining the Digital Future Center, framed the findings as an early look at a shift that futurists have long anticipated. “Futurists and cultural commentators have wondered what would happen once artificial systems became connected and companionable with humans,” Rainie said.
“The findings in our new study provide the first wave of insights about these emerging relationships as large language models like ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot are adopted by people and as AI agents become part of the landscape. They are harbingers of a future in which many more people will likely have these kinds of relationships.”
Personal use, growing reliance
Notable shares of AI companion users said they use their bots in personal, sometimes intimate, ways. That includes confiding in them, seeking advice on important life issues, and roleplaying scenarios they might encounter in romantic or other settings. Some users have developed a reliance on AI tools and prefer interacting with them to dealing with humans.
Many would be unhappy to lose access to their bots. The survey also asked about consequential life issues, with some companion users exploring key life decisions with their bots.
The Imagining the Digital Future Center is an interdisciplinary research center focused on the human impact of accelerating digital change and socio-technical challenges. It was established in 2000 as Imagining the Internet and was renamed with an expanded research agenda in 2024. It is funded and operated by Elon University, a private university in Elon, North Carolina.
As AI agents become more embedded in daily tools, the center’s findings offer an early measure of how those relationships are taking shape — and how much weight people are already putting on them.
