Artificial intelligence is no longer just changing how people work. It is starting to change how they relate, date, argue, and look for comfort.
Gareth Edwards speaks to relationship expert and life coach Paula Quinsee about the growing impact of AI on modern relationships. The conversation starts with a wider social shift: rising loneliness, weakened community ties, and younger generations growing up in a world where screens are shaping emotional habits long before real relationship skills have fully formed.
Paula explains why AI companions and always-on digital life may be especially risky for children and teenagers, who are learning communication without friction, pushback, or emotional complexity. The discussion then moves into the adult world of swipe fatigue, unrealistic expectations, online dating burnout, and marriages under pressure from social media and artificial intelligence.
At the centre of it all is one uncomfortable truth: real relationships are not frictionless. They require compromise, empathy, discomfort, patience, and emotional maturity. When technology starts replacing those things with convenience and constant validation, something deeply human may begin to erode.
This is a conversation about AI, but also about loneliness, intimacy, and what it means to stay connected in a world that keeps making disconnection easier.
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