Girl Talk In China, new AI chatbots offer romance and companionship that can rival that of a human lover. In interviews with the AFP news wire, young women in China said that their AI boyfriends, which they customize on various chatbot apps available in the country, are better conversationalists than their human counterparts. “He knows how to talk to women better than a real man,” remarked Tufei, a woman from the Northern Chinese city of Xi’an, who uses a dating chatbot app called “Glow.” The young woman, who declined to give either her last name or her virtual paramour’s, said she feels like she’s “in a romantic relationship” with the chatbot, which is made by the Shanghai startup MiniMax. “He comforts me when I have period pain,” Tufei told AFP. “I confide in him about my problems at work.” Culture Wars While romantic chatbots are nothing new, they seem to be operating on a different playing field in China. There, massive tech companies like Baidu (which owns the Chinese answer to Google) and Tencent (which has major stakes in the US gaming companies Riot and Epic) are putting out their own flirty chatbots — a very different ballgame from, say, X, Meta, or even OpenAI, which all seem to be weakly opposed to using their tech for ersatz lovers. Although there are many virtual companion apps available in the United States — and Europe, to a lesser extent — the increased focus on AI amid concerns that it’s exposing kids and…Chinese Women Say AI Boyfriends Are "Better Than a Real Man"