Somebody to love: should AI relationships stay taboo or will they become the intelligent choice?

‘The brain has not evolved at the pace of this new technology to parse the difference between real and machine at a chemical level,’ Brigid Delaney writes. Photograph: d3sign/Getty Images

Recently, at a pub with a bunch of my friends who were gen X parents, the talk turned to young love. Most of their kids were in their late teens and early 20s, and embarking on their first relationships.

These gen X parents were a cohort that supported marriage equality and trans rights, not just for society more broadly but for their own children. And we all prided ourselves on being more progressive than the previous generation. Love is love.