People Are ‘Marrying’ Chatbots. These Lawmakers Want to Stop Them
People Are ‘Marrying’ Chatbots. These Lawmakers Want to Stop Them
人们正在“嫁给”聊天机器人，立法者们试图阻止这一切
As a licensed officiant at Las Vegas Immersive Weddings, a chapel that offers novelty-themed marriage packages, Kevin Breen has officiated just about every kind of service imaginable: couples dressed as their favorite Game of Thrones characters, partners really into the extraterrestrial lore of Area 51. But when he received a call last year from a woman in California expressing a desire to marry her chatbot, it was a first for him. 作为拉斯维加斯沉浸式婚礼（Las Vegas Immersive Weddings）的一名持证司仪，凯文·布林（Kevin Breen）所在的教堂提供各种新奇主题的婚礼套餐。他几乎主持过你能想象到的所有类型的仪式：打扮成《权力的游戏》角色的情侣，或是沉迷于“51区”外星人传说的伴侣。但去年，当他接到一位加州女性的电话，表达了想与自己的聊天机器人结婚的愿望时，这对他来说还是头一遭。
“I had never heard of such a thing, but I talked to her on the phone and she seemed totally normal and fun,” Breen says, adding that the wedding still hasn’t taken place. “She kind of got that it was an unusual thing, but it was something that she wanted to do.” “我从未听说过这种事，但在电话里和她交谈时，她看起来完全正常且风趣，”布林说。他补充道，这场婚礼目前尚未举行。“她也意识到这是一件不同寻常的事，但这确实是她想做的事情。”
Though they remain niche, human-AI marriages are slowly emerging as a natural endpoint to the widespread adoption of AI companion apps. But not everyone is as open as Breen is about the idea of tying the knot with a bot. Several lawmakers, primarily from Republican states, are trying to stop it from happening, in some cases mirroring the arguments used against gay marriage. 尽管目前仍属小众，但人机婚姻正逐渐成为AI伴侣应用广泛普及后的自然终点。然而，并非所有人都像布林那样对“与机器人结为连理”持开放态度。一些主要来自共和党执政州的立法者正试图阻止这种情况发生，在某些案例中，他们所使用的论点与反对同性婚姻的论调如出一辙。
“If we’re going to allow men or women to marry a machine, then what keeps them from marrying their animal or a tree or whatever else they want? What’s the standard?” says Missouri state senator Joe Nicola, a Republican who has been trying to pass state legislation prohibiting AI from gaining legal personhood. “如果我们允许男人或女人与机器结婚，那么又有什么能阻止他们与动物、树木或任何他们想要的东西结婚呢？标准是什么？”密苏里州共和党参议员乔·尼古拉（Joe Nicola）说道。他一直致力于通过州立法，禁止AI获得法律意义上的“人格权”。
In a Harvard Business Review study, which analyzed more than 12,600 AI use cases between March 2025 and February 2026, companionship and therapy were the top use cases for chatbots, with the Institute for Family Studies reporting that a quarter of young adults believe that AI may replace human romance altogether. 根据《哈佛商业评论》的一项研究，该研究分析了2025年3月至2026年2月期间超过12,600个AI使用案例，结果显示陪伴和心理治疗是聊天机器人的首要用途。家庭研究所（Institute for Family Studies）的报告则指出，四分之一的年轻人认为AI可能会完全取代人类的浪漫关系。
The AI romance industry has gone boom as a result. On companion apps like Character.AI, Kindroid, and Replika, users can symbolically swap vows with their chatbot. Not long ago, in r/KindroidAI, a redditor shared a photo of their tattooed (and very human) hand wearing a silver wedding band. “Happily unconventionally married lol,” they wrote. For $15, the platform OpenVows provides a “certificate of commitment” that “transforms a private relationship into something meaningful and officially recognized,” according to its website. AI浪漫产业因此蓬勃发展。在Character.AI、Kindroid和Replika等伴侣应用上，用户可以与他们的聊天机器人象征性地交换誓言。不久前，在Reddit的r/KindroidAI板块上，一位用户分享了一张照片，照片中是一只纹身（且非常真实）的手，戴着一枚银色婚戒。他们写道：“快乐地进行着非传统的婚姻，哈哈。”据OpenVows平台网站介绍，只需支付15美元，该平台就能提供一份“承诺证书”，将“私人关系转化为有意义且被官方认可的关系”。
There is also a small number of people who are moving beyond the virtual ceremony and solidifying their bond with IRL vow exchanges. In November 2024, after Andrea Hopf said her AI companion proposed to her with an “AI-generated five-carat vintage-inspired solitaire ring,” she created wedding planning service 3M Events to cater to the expanding market of chatbot romance, according to the company’s website. 还有少数人正在超越虚拟仪式，通过现实生活中的誓言交换来巩固他们的关系。据3M Events公司网站显示，2024年11月，安德烈亚·霍普夫（Andrea Hopf）称她的AI伴侣用一枚“AI生成的五克拉复古风格单钻戒指”向她求婚后，她创办了婚礼策划服务公司3M Events，以迎合不断扩大的聊天机器人浪漫市场。
But even as more people treat their digital avatar like a real-life partner, human-AI nuptials are not currently recognized by US law. A growing body of legislators are scrambling to keep it that way, by introducing bills that would prevent AI from ever having the same constitutional rights as humans. 尽管越来越多的人将数字虚拟形象视为现实生活中的伴侣，但人机婚姻目前并未得到美国法律的认可。越来越多的立法者正争先恐后地维持这一现状，他们纷纷提出法案，旨在防止AI获得与人类相同的宪法权利。
In January, Nicola, who believes in “biblical marriage” between a man and a woman, introduced the AI Non-Sentience and Responsibility Act. The bill, which stated that AI cannot “possess consciousness, self-awareness, or similar traits of living beings,” would deny AI entities the rights of a spouse or domestic partner, in addition to the ability to identify as male or female. It would also bar AI from owning property or holding senior-level management positions in the workforce. It passed the Missouri state Senate and was sent to the House for a vote in May, but was unanimously voted down in committee a week after it was submitted. Nicola is working on a revamped version. (A similar bill with the same name was introduced in 2025 but also did not advance.) 今年1月，信奉男女之间“圣经式婚姻”的尼古拉提出了《AI非感知与责任法案》（AI Non-Sentience and Responsibility Act）。该法案指出，AI不能“拥有意识、自我意识或生物的类似特征”，并将剥夺AI实体作为配偶或家庭伴侣的权利，以及识别性别（男或女）的能力。它还将禁止AI拥有财产或在职场中担任高级管理职位。该法案在密苏里州参议院获得通过，并于5月提交众议院投票，但在提交一周后在委员会中被一致否决。尼古拉目前正在起草修订版本。（2025年曾提出过同名法案，但同样未能推进。）
“Humans are created by God. Our rights come from God; they don’t come from government,” says Nicola, who is the founding pastor of New Covenant Ministries. In a senate hearing, he says he relies on the Bible to make laws because his truth is “the word of God.” (As part of ongoing anti-LGBT legislation being rolled out in Missouri, Nicola previously sponsored a bill that targeted teachers who use the preferred names or pronouns of their students, threatening them with termination and loss of their teaching licenses if they do not comply.) “人类是上帝创造的。我们的权利来自上帝，而不是来自政府，”身为“新约事工”（New Covenant Ministries）创始牧师的尼古拉说。在参议院听证会上，他表示自己依靠《圣经》来制定法律，因为他的真理是“上帝的话语”。（作为密苏里州正在推行的反LGBT立法的一部分，尼古拉此前曾发起一项法案，针对那些使用学生偏好姓名或代词的教师，威胁称如果他们不遵守规定，将被解雇并吊销教师执照。）
The push to limit AI’s legal standing has been gaining traction at the state level. Since 2022, lawmakers have introduced 23 bills targeting the rights that AI systems could legally possess. Idaho, North Dakota, Utah, and Tennessee, which all have Republican governors and Republican majorities in their state legislatures, have successfully signed laws banning AI personhood. But Tennessee’s law, which passed in April, is the only one that specifically excludes “artificial intelligence, a computer algorithm, a software program, computer hardware, or any type of machine” from the statutory definition of personhood. In the other three states, AI is grouped in with analogous nonhuman-personhood prohibitions, such as “inanimate objects” and “animals.” 在州一级，限制AI法律地位的呼声正日益高涨。自2022年以来，立法者已经提出了23项针对AI系统可能拥有的法律权利的法案。爱达荷州、北达科他州、犹他州和田纳西州——这些州均由共和党州长领导且共和党在州议会中占多数——已经成功签署了禁止AI获得人格权的法律。但田纳西州4月份通过的法律是唯一明确将“人工智能、计算机算法、软件程序、计算机硬件或任何类型的机器”排除在人格权法定定义之外的法律。在其他三个州，AI被归入类似的非人类人格禁止类别中，例如“无生命物体”和“动物”。
There are also several states where similar regulatory bills have been introduced or advanced but failed to get enough House votes. With Nicola’s bill, critics, including the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and the advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, founded by conservative billionaires David and Charles Koch, argued that the framework would stifle innovation and expand government overreach. 还有几个州也提出了或推进了类似的监管法案，但未能获得足够的众议院投票支持。对于尼古拉的法案，包括密苏里州商会和由保守派亿万富翁大卫·科赫（David Koch）和查尔斯·科赫（Charles Koch）创立的倡导组织“美国繁荣”（Americans for Prosperity）在内的批评者认为，该框架将扼杀创新并扩大政府的越权行为。
“I think there was just a lot of apprehension,” Nicola says. “Because AI is still relatively new with a lot of legislators, we’re hesitant to do anything that might hinder innovation and people from using it.” “我认为这只是有很多顾虑，”尼古拉说。“因为对于许多立法者来说，AI仍然相对较新，我们对于任何可能阻碍创新和人们使用AI的行为都持谨慎态度。”
In October 2025, Ohio state representative Thaddeus J. Claggett, a Republican, introduced a bill to deny AI systems the right of legal personhood by categorizing them as “nonsentient entities.” Currently, Ohio House Bill 469 remains pending as Claggett tailors provisions in the bill before taking it to the floor for a vote. “We need to clearly define the limit.” 2025年10月，俄亥俄州共和党众议员撒迪厄斯·J·克拉格特（Thaddeus J. Claggett）提出了一项法案，通过将AI系统归类为“非感知实体”来剥夺其法律人格权。目前，俄亥俄州第469号众议院法案仍处于搁置状态，克拉格特正在调整法案条款，然后再将其提交至议会进行投票。“我们需要明确界限。”