How many people think flirting with AI chatbots is actually cheating?

The onset of artificial intelligence has changed the dating game in recent years, from singles using AI to chat up other humans to venturing to "dating" a bot itself. Earlier this year, Mashable's senior culture reporter Christianna Silva and tech reporter Cecily Mauran duked it out over whether dating an AI chatbot is considered cheating. Now, the Kinsey Institute and DatingAdvice.com have statistics on what daters themselves think.

In a survey of 2,000 American adults collected this year, 33 percent said either sexting or having a romantic relationship with AI is cheating. Of those people, 64 percent said both of those activities constitute infidelity; 21 percent selected only sexting with an AI, while 15 percent selected only romantic relationships.

"Among those who consider intimate interactions with an AI bot to be cheating, it seems that most people don't make a distinction between sexual and emotional intimacy. Most see any type of intimacy directed toward this technology as crossing a line," Dr. Justin Lehmiller, senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and one of the study's lead authors, told Mashable.

When Mashable showed sociologist and founder of the Center for Courageous Intimacy, Dr. Jennifer Gunsaullus, these statistics, she said. "These numbers reflect how unsettled some folks feel about what counts as intimacy in the age of AI. It can be difficult for us to know how to categorize AI interactions because they blur the lines between fantasy, porn, and the emotions we feel in actual human connections."

Kinsey and DatingAdvice also asked about other online interactions — including porn. Some believe that conversing with sex workers is cheating: 45 percent said they'd feel cheated on if their partner sent money to cam models (36 percent said the same if their partner talked to a cam model online, while 33 percent said likewise about their partner subscribing to someone's OnlyFans). Twenty percent believe that if their partner watched porn, they'd feel cheated on.

There are other digital actions that some would say are cheating: 72 percent said sexting with someone else, and 13 percent following or liking posts from someone attractive on social media.

But when it comes to the connection between humans and AI, Gunsaullus said that whether specific intimate interactions with AI are treated as cheating depends less on the technology and more on the agreements a couple makes.

"If couples want to cultivate healthy, trusting, connected relationships in the age of AI, they need to have clear discussions and boundary-setting about this within their relationship, and not just assume they are both on the same page in terms of what counts as infidelity," she said.