alt.hn

8/3/2026 at 8:08:16 AM

1 in 4 people in Japan believes AI could replace friends and family: poll

 https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/08/02/japan/poll-ai-replace-friends-family/

by 01-_-

8/3/2026 at 9:42:51 AM

That article doesn't actually link to the supposed study. I am going to ignore it, since I have no way of checking its methodology.

Unless my adblocker is just blocking the link, but my adblocker is also blocking so many requests from that website that the blocked count climbs to over 12k within seconds, so I'm not gonna turn that off to check.

by Plont

8/3/2026 at 8:30:00 AM

Many people now rely on chatting with AI to relieve stress, which is a convenient way, but it also carries some risks, as people become increasingly closed off.

by Arya_xiaofan

8/3/2026 at 4:47:28 PM

It's by design. Now we are all gig workers, solo everything. You can't have power if everybody works in isolation.

by GoToRO

8/3/2026 at 5:45:35 PM

This is going to be framed in the usual "weird Japan" way but it's not at all limited to Japan. I don't know if similar studies have been conducted in the US or other other countries (and, as another comment note, the supposed study on which this is based isn't linked in this article), but phenomenon like r/MyBoyfriendIsAI and countless stories about people all around the world becoming entranced by "relationships" with AIs indicate this is not at all unique to Japan. I suspect a sadly large number of people everywhere feel this way, they just want someTHING to talk to if they can't/don't have someONE.

by LiquidSky

8/3/2026 at 10:56:25 AM

1 in 4, 25% , which is probably what could be expected from anything, anywhere, that has been hyped as hard and for so long as IA. or to put it another way, it has been some time now since the "law of supply and demand" was broken and abolished and replaced with the fact of money having the power to supply more demand, for essentialy anything under almost any condition, at least initialy.

by metalman

8/3/2026 at 4:12:32 PM

They were already replacing relationships with relationship-workers, and in more minority, robots.

This is a natural evolution of the trend.

by DANmode

8/3/2026 at 9:36:46 AM

This is sad but not remotely shocking. Japan overall is a very lonely society based around distractions, whether that's the bright lights, work, pachinko, mobile games, whatever it may be. So many already replace friends with pretend people such as anime characters. The commoness of people who have huge pillows representing their favourite character that for them is a bedtime friend, that they talk to is far too common.

This isn't made easier for those who do have family and friends. They have minimal physical connections day to day due to societal rules that are arbitrarily restrictive and based in long should have been abandoned historical expectations.

by ktallett