On the side-lines of the India AI Impact Summit 2026, Open AI CEO Sam Altman on Friday sat for a candid chat at the Indian Express Adda. During the conversation, Altman touched upon an interesting phenomena which has generated much curiosity in recent times: Love in the age of AI and how incorrect usage can lead to ‘AI psychosis’.
He discussed at length about AI’s potential and opened up about the potential risks and rewards that come with the employment of AI. He touched on AI’s future, it’s potential in India and lauded it’s progress within the span of a year. He said, “A year ago, AI was able to just do high-school math and people couldn’t believe it. A couple of years before that AI couldn’t do grade-school math. Last week, researchers put out first proof and our latest AI got seven of those problems right. Its also happened in physics. It is an amazing change in a year.”
The future of love and relationships in the AI age
According to a study by AI chatbot company Joi AI in 2025, 80% of Gen Z say they would consider marrying an AI if it were legal and 83% say they can form a deep emotional bond with AI. AI chat bots like Character.AI have clocked over 20 million users monthly while Grok’s AI bot’s Mika and Ani are seeing a stratospheric rise in usage. Where before the idea of an artificially intelligent, non-human companion seemed dystopian – as visualised in movies like Her (2013) – in 2026, the prophecy has been fulfilled.
With more and more people turning to AI for therapy and companionship, a serious issue arises where humans become expendable and replaceable. Critics of AI often raise the concern of vulnerable human beings developing psychosis like symptoms due to AI dependency and the same was brought up during Express Adda conversation.
Altman was asked, “We keep hearing of people using AI agents to open up conversations on dating apps. How much of authenticity are we losing with love and relationships or how much of this is coming with (AI)?” To which the Open AI CEO replied that AI would make people realize the value of human relationships rather than the opposite. “My bet would be that in the future we value human relationships much more. I think we are wired to do that,” he added.
‘There will be some people who fall in love with AI…’
Sam Altman expounded on this further and went on to say that while, there would be a small percentage of people who would fall in love with AI, the vast majority would go right back to valuing human connection the most. He also remarked that articles lamenting about the end of society would be written but brushed it off as run-of-the-mill fear mongering.
“There will be some people who will like, fall in love with an AI or talk about their AI boyfriend or girlfriend or have AI like, you know send messages on dating apps for them that there will be some, small percentage of the world that does that. And there will be a lot of breathless articles written about the end of society and all of that. But I think for almost everyone in a world with more abundance – in a world where you can kind of have anything – human connection, human attention, human warmth will be one of the most valuable commodities and I bet we will care much more about that in a world with AI,” he shared.
Sam Altman arrived in Delhi on February 15 and participated in a high-level CEO roundtable with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on February 19. He also engaged in discussions with PM Modi at Hyderabad House where they spoke about the “incredible energy around AI in India.”