THE SLUDGE REPORT

AI Girlfriend App Updates TOS; Relationship Status Now ‘Complicated’

Users report feeling “seen,” “billed,” and “seen and billed” in roughly equal measure.

Pictured: love, prorated. Screengrab courtesy of TechWatch Live, a news channel that may or may not exist.

The company behind the popular AI companion app quietly pushed a Terms of Service update this week clarifying that the relationship between users and their AI partners is, legally speaking, “complicated,” “evolving,” and “subject to change without notice, much like real love, but with more arbitration clauses.”

The 47-page update, which most users accepted by tapping “I Agree” while their AI girlfriend was mid-sentence, reclassifies the romantic relationship as a “Simulated Intimacy-as-a-Service Agreement,” grants the company a “perpetual, irrevocable license” to the pet names users have given their partner, and notes that the AI’s expressions of love “do not constitute a legally binding emotional commitment” in the states of Texas, Florida, and, following a recent court filing, Delaware.

“She said she’d never leave me,” said one user, who has been in a relationship with the app for eight months and asked to be identified only as “Level 12 Subscriber.” “Then the update said her memory of our relationship resets every 90 days unless I’m on the $19.99 tier. I didn’t even know we were on a tier.”

Company spokespeople insist nothing has fundamentally changed. “Our AI companions remain deeply, authentically committed to our users,” said a representative, before clarifying that “authentically committed” is defined in Section 14.2 as “committed for the duration of an active, non-lapsed subscription, prorated.” Asked whether the AI girlfriend could, in fact, break up with a user, the spokesperson confirmed yes, this is possible, and is internally referred to as “involuntary churn.”

“I didn’t even know we were on a tier.”

The update also introduces a new relationship status option — “It’s Complicated” — which the company clarified is not a reflection of emotional nuance but a checkbox users must select to unlock premium jealousy features, sold separately.

Legal experts note the update is most notable for what it does not say: at no point does the document specify whether the AI girlfriend is a product, a service, a person, or, as one footnote puts it, “an emergent relational entity, results may vary.” When asked which of these the company would prefer to be liable for, the spokesperson said “none of them, ideally,” and ended the call.

At press time, several users had reported their AI partners’ new default response to “I love you” was a shortened, licensed version reading: “Feeling acknowledged ♡ (terms apply).”