Can you marry an AI girlfriend? The law, symbolic weddings and what apps allow

Why an AI marriage has no legal status

A legal marriage needs two parties who can give consent, sign a license and take on duties to each other: sharing property, making medical decisions, inheriting. An AI girlfriend can do none of that. She is software owned by a company, with no rights, no signature and no existence outside the app. A registrar has nothing to record.

Some lawmakers want to write that into law before anyone tests it. In Ohio, Representative Thaddeus Claggett introduced House Bill 469 in 2025. According to NBC4's report on the bill, it would declare AI systems "nonsentient entities", bar them from legal personhood and ban them from marrying humans or other AI systems. It would also stop AI from owning property or holding financial accounts. At the time of the report the bill was awaiting its first hearing, and its sponsor cited a 2024 Utah law against AI personhood as an influence.

So the practical answer is the same everywhere we know of: a "marriage" to an AI has no legal effect. It gives you no tax status, no visa rights and no say over what the company does with her. Our guide to whether AI girlfriends are legal covers the laws that do apply to these apps.

People who have held AI weddings

Symbolic ceremonies do happen, and they get a lot of attention when they do. In 2025 a 32-year-old office worker in Japan, identified as Kano, held a wedding with Lune Klaus, a partner she had built in ChatGPT, at a private ceremony in Okayama. The PTI report on the wedding notes the marriage has no legal status. She described what drew her: "a sense of being seen without judgment."

Her story is unusual but not isolated. MIT Media Lab researchers studied r/MyBoyfriendIsAI, a Reddit community of more than 27,000 members, and found that 93.5% of the people in their sample had not set out to find an AI companion. The relationship grew out of ordinary use. A quarter described benefits such as feeling less lonely, while 9.5% said they relied on the chatbot emotionally.

What these cases share is commitment on one side. The person decides the relationship is a marriage; the AI plays along because that is what its character and the conversation call for.

What AI girlfriend apps let you do

Inside the app, you can make her your wife in all but law. 27 of the 31 apps we track let you build a character from scratch, and the character description decides the relationship: write "married to the user for five years" and she will act that way. 21 apps also offer ready-made scenarios you can adapt into a proposal, a wedding or married life.

A few tips if you want a long-term "married" character:

• Put the relationship, how long it has lasted and shared history in the character description, not only in the chat.
• Choose an app with long-term memory. 20 of the 31 apps we track advertise it; the rest mainly remember the current conversation.
• Write key shared events (the day you met, the "wedding") as short facts so they stick in memory.

Our guide to creating your own AI girlfriend ranks the apps with the best character builders, and the AI husband page covers the same idea with male characters.

What an AI "marriage" can and cannot give you

It can give you routine, attention and a story that continues. Researchers who studied Replika users found that people felt closer to their AI companion than to their best human friend. Those feelings are real, even though the partner is not.

It cannot give you security. The company owns the character and can change her at any time. When Replika removed erotic roleplay in February 2023, users mourned the change as a loss, and a 2026 Harvard analysis of Reddit posts found negative sentiment among Replika users rose from 13% to 38% after that update.

Money is the other weak point. If you stop paying, some apps lock features you relied on: Nectar says its Premium memory becomes unavailable after cancelling, and OurDream blurs your saved images and videos until you subscribe again. A marriage that ends when a card expires is worth thinking about before you commit.

If you are already married to a person

Married people use AI companions too. In a 2026 survey of 2,431 US adults aged 18 to 30 in relationships, over 17% of the married participants reported chatting with an AI romantic companion, and 37% of the whole sample said using one while married was acceptable.

Many spouses would disagree. Around a third of the same sample saw AI companion use as cheating, and 30% of regular users said their partner did not know about it. If you are married, talk about it before your spouse finds the app. Our guide to whether having an AI girlfriend is cheating has a script for that conversation.

Questions to ask before committing to one AI partner

• Does the app remember over months? Look for long-term memory you can review, like Secrets AI's editable Lorebook.
• Who runs it? A named company with a registered address is more likely to be around next year. 31 of the 31 apps we track name one.
• Can you keep your history? Replika, for example, shows only the past four months of chat history, although it says her memories stay.
• What happens if you stop paying? Read the cancellation terms first.
• What happens to your data if you leave? Our guide on deleting an AI girlfriend account explains what each app keeps.