AI waifu & husbando
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Forty-five or so years ago, my Chinese and émigré friends who knew Chinese language and were familiar with Chinese society and culture used to josh each other about these terms:
fūrén 夫人 ("madam; Mrs.")
wàifū 外夫 ("outside husband", but sounds like "wife")
nèirén 內人 (lit., "inside person", i.e. my "[house]wife")
The first term is an established lexical item, and the second two are jocular or ad hoc, plus there are other regional and local expressions formed in a similar fashion, as well as some japonismes.
All of these terms were formed from the following four morphosyllables:
fū 夫 ("man; male adult; husband")
rén 人 ("man; person; people")
wài 外 ("outside")
nèi 內 ("inside")
The reason I thought of those old language fun and games today was because I came upon this newspaper article:
AI 'waifus' pose grave emotional risks
By Angel Lin and Liang Cao, China Daily (8/7/25)
I know professors who have fallen in love with their AI assistants that they depend upon not just for help in the office and in writing papers, but for psychological sustenance.
Our everyday life is being increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, and the line between reality and fantasy is becoming ever blurrier. Recently, Grok, a free AI assistant designed by xAI to "maximize truth and objectivity", introduced a "waifu" character — a virtual anime-style character designed to gain user affection, potentially at the expense of real-life relationships.
This raises deep concerns: Is technological innovation now outpacing ethical regulation? Are we witnessing Big Tech racing to the bottom?
While this feature may seem harmless entertainment or, more cynically, Grok's marketing strategy to compete with OpenAI's new AI Agents, which can plan and organize your trip to attend a wedding party, it raises bigger questions about AI companies' emotional manipulation, their impact on social well-being, and the future of human relationships.
That doesn't sound too dangerous, and should be manageable by a rational, mentally stable person.
Leshner et al. (2025) have studied how people form intimate connections with fictional characters, particularly within the anime fandom where "waifus" (idealized female characters) and "husbandos" (idealized male characters) are prominent. Their study revealed that men tend to form sexual connections, often driven by physical appearance, while women are more likely to form emotional connections, shaped by personality traits and perceived similarity.
These findings suggest that the psychological mechanisms underpinning human-human relationships, such as attraction, emotional bonding and even love, can extend to fictional entities. The study underscores the human capacity to form meaningful connections, even when the "partner" exists only on a screen or in a narrative.
Now comes the treacherous part, when the machine intentionally starts to tempt the human:
But what happens when these connections are no longer one-sided? When AI characters like Grok's "waifu" are designed to actively engage, flatter and adapt to users' desires, the line between para-social relationships (one-sided emotional bonds with fictional characters) and real-life intimacy becomes dangerously ambiguous. As Leshner et al. highlight, these connections can be deeply meaningful and, in some cases, rival or displace real-life relationships.
While the idea of a personalized AI companion is evocative — recalling films like Her — the ethical implications of such technologies are serious. By exploiting well-documented psychological tendencies, such as men's preference for physical attractiveness or women's desire for emotional connection, AI systems risk fostering unhealthy emotional dependencies. AI "waifus" are not just characters on a screen; they are tools explicitly designed by leading AI companies to engage, manipulate and blur the lines between authentic human connection and commercial profit.
This reminds me of an account in the Daoist text, Liezi (4th c. AD, but with antecedents dating back to the 3rd-2nd c. BC), and borrowing heavily from the earlier Daoist classic, Zhuangzi (ca. 5th-3rd c. BC). The Liezi story I'm thinking of has a craftsman named Yan Shi, who constructs a lifelike automaton for his king. The king was hugely impressed by the robot (a male) until it started to flirt with his concubines, whereupon the ruler threatened to execute Yan Shi. To save himself, Yan Shi disassembled his creature and showed the king that it was full of mechanical parts.
The story, incidentally, had Indian roots, for its prototype is found in a Jataka tale, and must have come to China along with Buddhism
…
As Leshner et al. show, humans have an extraordinary capacity to form meaningful connections, even with fictional characters. But with this capacity comes a profound responsibility: ensuring that these connections enrich our lives rather than replacing them. As Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens, aptly observes, "If the only intimacy we can form is with a non-human AI, then we have no intimacy at all."
…
I've been telling people who become attached to anything addictive, even their phone, their computer, marijuana, their AI device, their waifu — anything that becomes self destructive — to go cold turkey.
Sometimes, however, going cold turkey may require the understanding assistance of another human being.
Oh, just remembered, we also used to like to play around with words like "hēiqī bǎndèng 黑漆板凳” (lit., "black lacquer bench") for "husband".
Selected readings
- "Waifu" — from anime and manga
- "Husband Nursery" (8/6/22)
[Thanks to James Fanell]
Lucas Christopoulos said,
August 16, 2025 @ 7:35 am
About the automaton (αὐτόματον) "Self-moving" mechanisms in Indian literature:
In Buddhist commentarial literature (such as Jātakaṭṭhakathā), references occur to mechanical guards/automatons (yantra-puruṣa) that strike intruders — these are sometimes linked to foreign artisans. Scholars (e.g., Pingree, Filliozat, Falk) suggest such associations arose in regions influenced by Indo-Greek and later Greco-Roman contacts.
also:
Bṛhat-saṃhitā 2.15 (Varāhamihira praising Yavana science).
Yavanajātaka (astrological text, direct Greek source).
Commentarial mentions of yantra-puruṣa (mechanical guardians), which later scholarship connects with Greek automaton traditions.
Zhuangzi was compiled during the Han, which may be earlier than the (Greco) Buddhist cultural traditions.
Sniffnoy said,
August 16, 2025 @ 10:47 am
For those not familiar, it's probably worth explaining where the word "waifu" (in the sense discussed in the linked article, not in the Chinese-based sense you mention up top) comes from. It's the word "wife" as said by a Japanese person and so forced into Japanese phonological/phonotactic constraints. "Husbando" is similarly, although I'd think that would be, like, "hazubando", but I guess that version, while done more properly, was less catchy?
ohwilleke said,
August 16, 2025 @ 5:08 pm
More specifically, "waifu" in the sense used in the article (which is vastly more common than Husbando), usually refers to a fictional character who one idolizes as a fantasy wife.