Men Twice As Likely To Flirt With AI, But Does It Count As Cheating?

A romantic spark used to require another person on the other end of the line. For a growing number of American men, the other end of the line is a chatbot. New survey data shows that men are roughly twice as likely as women to have struck up a flirty or sexual exchange with artificial intelligence, and men are also more likely to say those conversations left them aroused.

That gender split sits at the center of fresh research from Talker Research, which polled 2,000 U.S. adults about their private lives with tools like Claude, ChatGPT and Google Gemini. Fifteen percent of men reported having flirty conversations with an AI chatbot, compared with 8% of women. When asked whether a conversation with AI had turned them on, 17% of men said yes, versus 9% of women.

Roughly one in ten Americans overall (11%) admitted to romantic or sexual chats with a bot, and 12% said an AI exchange had aroused them. Behind those tidy averages, though, two groups stand out separately: men, and younger adults. The survey measured each on its own and did not break gender and age down together, so it cannot single out young men as one combined group.

Men and AI romance skew one way

Numbers rarely explain themselves, and this survey stops short of asking why the gap exists. What it does show is consistency: on both measures, flirting and arousal, men roughly doubled women. Fifteen against eight on flirty talk. Seventeen against nine on feeling turned on. A difference that holds across two separate questions is harder to wave off as noise.

Age stretches the gap even wider. Among Gen Z, more than a quarter (27%) said they had shared naughty conversations with an AI chatbot, and the same share reported feeling aroused by them. Participation falls off steeply with each older group: 16% of millennials, 9% of Gen X, and just 2% of baby boomers. A boomer is more than ten times less likely than a Gen Z adult to have flirted with a bot.

Read side by side, the two patterns describe two separate tendencies: men reported more than women, and younger adults reported more than older ones. Because the survey never crossed those categories, it cannot say how young men compare with young women, or which single group tops the list. Both slices simply lean the same way on their own terms.

Context helps frame why the male numbers stand out, though the survey did not test any of it. These are not fringe apps built for romance but mainstream assistants people already keep open for work, homework and search. Flirting with one means treating a productivity tool as a confidant, and men, at least in what they were willing to report, crossed that line at roughly double the rate of women. One possible explanation, which the survey did not examine, is that a chatbot chat is more discreet than swiping through a dating app and easier to keep private.

When men and AI romance starts to look like cheating

Comfort with the technology does not mean everyone waves it through. A quarter of Americans (24%) said flirting with AI counts as cheating in a relationship, a verdict that reframes a late-night chatbot session as something a partner might not forgive.

Younger adults, the same group most likely to flirt with bots, are also the most likely to call it a betrayal. Over a third of Gen Z (36%) consider getting romantic with AI a dealbreaker. Sitting with both facts at once is a little dizzying: the generation most willing to try it is also the generation most ready to end a relationship over it. A tool of intimacy for one person can read as infidelity to the partner sitting across the couch.

That tension helps explain why the topic refuses to stay niche. Half a joke, half a genuine question, “does this count as cheating” turns a software feature into a relationship problem with real stakes.

A habit that looks set to grow

Rather than a passing novelty, respondents expect AI intimacy to become more common. Forty-four percent of Americans said they believe people will form more genuine emotional relationships with AI in the future, and 16% went further, predicting there will be “many” more such bonds.

Conducted online between July 1 and July 6, 2026, the poll drew on a general population sample of 2,000 adults, the kind of size pollsters lean on for a national read. Respondents were asked what they expect, not whether those expectations change how anyone acts, so the 44% figure is a read on public sentiment rather than a forecast of behavior. Even as sentiment it carries weight: today’s arousal statistic, a number that might sound like a punchline, could look less like a joke if that expected shift in how people seek connection actually arrives.

For now, the raw figures stay modest. Most Americans have not flirted with a chatbot, and most have not felt anything romantic toward one. Yet the composition of the minority that has is telling: it leans young and it leans male, and it appears in a moment when conversational AI has only recently landed in everyday pockets. Small numbers early in a technology’s life have a way of not staying small.

Reading the gap without overreading it

A survey captures what people are willing to admit on an anonymous questionnaire, not a full accounting of behavior. Some respondents may underreport out of embarrassment, others may exaggerate. Self-reported arousal is a slippery thing to measure, and 2,000 people, while a healthy sample, cannot speak for every corner of a country of hundreds of millions.

What the data can support is narrower and still worth stating plainly. Men reported romantic and sexual interest in AI at about twice the rate women did, that interest concentrates among the young, and a sizable slice of the public already treats such flirting as a relationship offense. None of that proves men are lonelier, hornier or more tech-obsessed than women. It says only that, asked directly, more men than women said yes.

Companionship apps and chatbots built for romance keep multiplying, and the audience raising its hand first is men. Whether that reflects appetite, curiosity or simple willingness to admit it, the machines now have a dating demographic, and so far it skews male.

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