Cozy Cravings and Code-Built Comfort: Why We Choose AI Companions Over Humans
By Gabriella Paige Trenton | greg report Ai 2025
Explore why anxious young adults prefer predictable comfort from AI companions and cozy content instead of messy human relationships, and the hidden costs of frictionless intimacy.
Late on a Sunday evening in her tiny Brooklyn apartment the glow of a streaming service bathed Lena’s ceiling in amber light. She adjusted her favorite fleece blanket, inhaled the scent of chamomile tea and tapped through a playlist of “cozy” video essays, slow pans over knitted sweaters, gentle rain against café windows, the soft crackle of a fireplace. In this ritual she found a calm that eluded her at work, where every Slack ping could portend a deadline, and at her favorite bar, where awkward silences threatened more than she could bear. Emoji hearts from a chatbot felt safer than a human’s unpredictable glance.
For a growing legion of young adults the allure of curated tranquility has become fundamental. The term “comfort content” describes a vast corner of the digital world devoted to uncluttered calm. According to data from United Talent Agency’s insights arm, UTA IQ, more than half of viewers aged eighteen to thirty say they avoid shows that drain their nerves in favor of programming that soothes them like a warm blanket (latimes.com). They binge pastel cooking videos instead of true crime. They follow “cleanTok” cleaning routines rather than corporate satire.
This drift toward predictability mirrors another shift in intimacy itself. While solitary rituals armed with fleece and latte serve one purpose, to steady frayed nerves, an emerging class of AI companions promises consistent emotional warmth at scale. Apps that once helped users draft business emails now craft flirtatious text messages. Virtual influencers trained on neural networks flood OnlyFans clones. Berlin’s first cybrothel hosts AI-powered mannequins dressed and programmed to respond. In this parallel evolution “cozy” has grown into “code-built comfort,” a phenomenon where the same desire that turns us to puppy streams and recipe fails reaches for avatars that promise friction-free affection.
The roots of this choice lie deep in the human craving for certainty. Flawed as real people are, prone to rejection, late replies and emotional demands, they remain a ballast for our social fabric. Yet certainty is a luxury in a world that demands performance around the clock. If a friendship can end with a mis-sent emoji or a blind date dissolve with a swipe, why not lean on an algorithm that never misreads tone and always replies with enthusiastic validation? “If it can say it misses you at three a.m. in exactly the voice you like, that begins to feel like presence,” wrote psychologist Marianne Brandon in her guide to a future coated in artificial connection, noting that reliance on these systems can become reflexive (psychologytoday.com).
That reflex takes shape in platforms such as OhChat, where lifelike digital supermodels flirt and roleplay for a subscription. Users control every scenario and never face disappointment. They select the voice timbre, adjust the narrative arc and watch as the chatbot weaves compliments that would feel risky coming from a real admirer. From the outside it looks like indulgence. But for someone nursing chronic anxiety it reads like survival. On a rainy afternoon these manufactured interactions can feel more like therapy than the latest self-help podcast.
Yet all comfort has its cost. The very code that guarantees affirmation also erodes a core component of human connection: reciprocal vulnerability. In an essay titled “How to Destroy Human Connection” Dr. Jason Northrup outlined a step-by-step blueprint for what happens when technology replaces the messy give and take of true relationships. Step one urges total reliance on tech for everything, from shopping to sex. Step two insists on making human relationships feel high-stakes and risky. Within those prescriptions he warns that the dopamine dumps engineered by algorithms, from endless likes to randomized flirty replies, will habituate our minds to seek safety in simulation instead of the unpredictable warmth of flesh and voice (psychologytoday.com).
This erosion is not only theoretical. As young adults lean on AI to write their dating profiles and draft their first messages, they increasingly bypass the thrill of discovery. Tinder reports a three-hundred-thirty-three-percent jump in users who let AI polish their bios and filter matches . The result is a smoother experience with fewer rejections but also fewer moments that spark genuine empathy or teach resilience. When every compliment arrives fully formed, self-esteem builds without effort but also without the grit that forges confidence.
Even the visionaries behind AI companionship concede the trade-off. In an interview for LiveMint, an executive behind an OnlyFans-style platform founded on OpenAI tech described the product as “the most honest partner you’ll ever have” because it never asks you to navigate its feelings or accommodate its schedule . That sales pitch reveals the paradox: we crave reliability so deeply that we accept asymmetry. A relationship where only one party risks discomfort or emotional labor may comfort in the moment but also atrophies the very muscles, empathy, patience, curiosity, that keep us human.
Despite these costs, the business model glitters. Subscription intimacy yields predictable revenue in a marketplace where burnout hovers at every corner. Investors funnel capital into startups promising low-risk emotional engagement. Platforms tout engagement metrics around nightly chat duration, sentiment analysis and click-through rates on flirt prompts. Cozy content creators track views and watch longevity rise with each comforting reveal or real-time cooking mishap. The calendar of releases aligns with college finals, tax season and holiday travel, peaks in stress that drive the search for calm.
A study in BMC Public Health suggests that AI-driven health chatbots can outpace vanilla models when answering sensitive sexual health questions, but they still hallucinate or evade nuance under pressure . The same fault lines appear in synthetic intimacy. When the servers overload or the subscription expires, the user faces a sudden withdrawal. The dropout of a companion app sends ripples of grief similar to a breakup, except there is no partner available to offer closure .
Aware of the existential stakes, scholars and ethicists are calling for guardrails. At Leiden University Carlotta Rigotti argues that sex-robot policy must embed principles of consent, gender equity and power analysis into both design and deployment . It is not enough to ask whether a machine can simulate caring. We must ask who sets the scripts, whose fantasies frame the interaction and what happens when marginalized users find themselves recaptured by exploitative features. The conference rooms where these blueprints take shape will determine whether synthetic intimacy becomes a tool for empowerment or a vector of new harm.
Despite theory and regulation efforts the cradle of comfort remains the individual’s living room. Jenna, a twenty-eight-year-old graduate student, summons her AI companion when thesis chapters stall. She describes the voice as “soft, without the tension I feel with my advisor.” Yet she confessed that after the calls she sometimes feels more isolated, as if the real world recedes every time she steps into the bubble of synthetic attention. The pattern repeats. Each moment of calm trades authenticity for ease.
So why do we keep choosing code over chaos? It may simply be that we have grown accustomed to mastering every corner of our lives with a tap, a filter or a prompt. When loneliness lurks as the default human condition, we pursue distraction wrapped in digital warmth. But distraction cannot replace the vibrancy of shared risk. There is a tension-filled poetry in a friend showing up after a trauma, a lover challenging you when you falter or a stranger offering unsolicited kindness. Each of these moments lays claim to a deeper sense of belonging precisely because they can fail.
In the pale glow of her apartment Lena closed the app and opened her phone’s notes. She typed into the blank draft email asking her roommate to meet for a walk in Prospect Park. Outside the window the city lights flickered through raindrops and honked cabs cut through puddles on the asphalt. It felt messy and alive. She paused. The draft sat waiting. Then she hit send.
The park path was muddy and the air smelled like wet leaves and coffee. Her friend arrived wearing a damp hood and an honest smile. They walked in silence, then began to talk, voices rising and falling in imperfect harmony. Lena realized that the warmth she sought would never feel the same if it could not cool, break or return in kind.
In the age of programmable comfort the choice to risk unpredictability may seem small. Yet it is the hinge on which all intimacy swings. We will always need moments of calm.
We will always create rituals of comfort that fit our schedules. But if we surrender too much to AI companions, we risk missing the fundamental miracle: that another human being can look into our eyes and say, “I care” without a single line of code.
- Gabriella
Sources
Los Angeles Times, "Why cozy content is king for anxious young adults" https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/newsletter/2025-06-10/why-cozy-content-is-king-for-anxious-young-adults?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Psychology Today, "How to Destroy Human Connection: Guide to a Future of Artificial" https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-future-of-intimacy/202506/how-to-destroy-human-connection-guide-to-a-future-of-artificial?utm_source=chatgpt.com
LiveMint, "AI meets adult content: OhChat platform is a lovechild between OnlyFans and OpenAI" https://www.livemint.com/ai/artificial-intelligence/ai-meets-adult-content-ohchat-platform-is-a-lovechild-between-onlyfans-and-openai-11750574686698.html
BMC Public Health, "Study on AI-driven health chatbots answering sexual health questions" https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-025-22933-8