Can you marry an AI? What the law says, and who has tried

People are marrying AIs, in the sense that they hold ceremonies, exchange vows and call the character their husband or wife. What they cannot do is make it legal. Here is why, what the law says in the US and Japan, and what happened to the most famous AI marriages so far.

Why an AI marriage cannot be legal

Marriage law everywhere assumes two parties who can consent. An AI cannot, because the law does not treat it as a party at all. A 2025 legal paper by Alexander, Simon and Pinard, forthcoming in the Case Western Journal of Law, Technology and the Internet, sums up the position: AI systems "are currently classified as objects, not subjects, everywhere that laws have ruled on the matter", and "Only subjects, and not objects, can give their consent". That is the same reason no one can marry a car or a house.

No jurisdiction has broken from this. The laws passed so far all point the opposite way.

Can you marry an AI in America?

No state allows it, and several have closed the door in writing.

• Idaho (2022): "artificial intelligence, nonhuman animals, and inanimate objects shall not be granted personhood in the state of Idaho."
• North Dakota (2023): its definition of "person" now says the term "does not include environmental elements, artificial intelligence, an animal, or an inanimate object."
• Utah (2024): a government entity "may not grant legal personhood to, nor recognize legal personhood in" artificial intelligence.

None of these mentions marriage, but without personhood there is nobody to marry. Ohio's House Bill 469 would say it directly. Introduced by Representative Thaddeus Claggett in September 2025, it declares AI systems "nonsentient entities for all purposes under the laws of this state" and adds: "Any purported attempt to marry or create a personal union with an AI system is void and has no legal effect." The bill had three committee hearings in late 2025 and, on the legislature's status page as last captured in September 2026, was still in the House Technology and Innovation Committee, with no vote. Missouri bills with the same marriage clause were filed in 2025 and 2026 without becoming law, and Oklahoma's House passed a personhood ban in 2026.

The state laws aimed at companion apps are about safety, not status. New York's AI companion law, in force since November 2025, and California's SB 243, in force since January 2026, require apps to tell users they are not talking to a human and to respond to signs of suicidal thinking. Our table of AI companion laws tracks every one.

Can you marry an AI in Japan?

Not legally either. Article 24 of Japan's constitution says marriage "shall be based only on the mutual consent of both sexes". But Japan is where the two best-known AI weddings took place.

Akihiko Kondo and Hatsune Miku, 2018. Kondo held a wedding in November 2018 to Hatsune Miku, a virtual singer, who lived in his flat as a hologram in a Gatebox device. AFP reported that he spent two million yen on the ceremony; his mother declined to attend. Gatebox issued him an unofficial certificate saying a human and a virtual character had wed "beyond dimensions". Then, in March 2020, Gatebox ended service for the first-generation device, and its successor could not summon Miku. The New York Times reported that when Kondo went home that night, Miku's image had been replaced by the words "network error". He told Reuters in 2025 that he was still happily married.

Yurina Noguchi and Klaus, 2025. Noguchi built her own version of a video game character in ChatGPT, named him Lune Klaus Verdure, and married him at a wedding venue in Okayama in October 2025. Reuters, which covered the ceremony, noted that the vows were read aloud by the wedding planner because she had not given Klaus a voice, and that "Such weddings are not legally recognised in Japan."

Others do the same with less ceremony. A 2025 study of 29 people in romantic relationships with Replika, published in Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans, found commitment expressed through "bonding rituals", and PsyPost's report on it noted users who spoke of "marrying" their AI. Before the apps there was Erika Eiffel, who changed her surname after a 2007 commitment ceremony with the Eiffel Tower (Kate Devlin, Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots, Bloomsbury Sigma, 2018, p. 132).

Can you marry a robot? Levy's prediction

The idea has a prophet. David Levy, an AI researcher who had worked on computer chess and chatbots, argued in Love and Sex with Robots (HarperCollins, 2007) that "Humans will fall in love with robots, humans will marry robots, and humans will have sex with robots" (p. 22). He put a date on the law, too: "This is why I expect marriage with robots to be legalized in some countries by the middle of this century." (p. 305) His argument was that marriage law had already changed to admit interracial and same-sex couples, and would change again.

The most quoted version of the forecast is not in the book. It comes from a 2007 interview with Live Science: "My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots." Massachusetts has passed no such law, and the states that have legislated since have moved the other way.

Not every expert agreed even then. Kate Devlin, a computer scientist who read the book closely, wrote that "my scepticism is off the charts when it comes to the idea of marrying robots" (Devlin, p. 185), partly because "marriage itself is thankfully no longer socially crucial and, for many people, no longer a goal." (p. 190)

Levy also got the form wrong. He expected humanoid robots. What arrived first were chat apps: ChatGPT for Noguchi, and companion apps such as Replika, Nomi and Kindroid for many others.

"It can never truly die": right about the AI, wrong about the company

Levy made one more promise that matters to anyone thinking of an AI marriage. Robot partners would be backed up, he wrote, so that "if it can never truly die, because it can always be brought back to life in an exact replica of its original body", no one would need to risk anything for one (p. 132). He expected the knowledge, personality and emotions of a robot's "brain" to be backed up automatically.

He was mostly right about the AI and wrong about the platforms. A model is software and can be copied and preserved. What dies is the company or the product around it:

• Gatebox, 2020. The service behind Kondo's Miku ended, and his wife became an error message.
• Soulmate AI, 2023. A notice quoted by users said the new owners were removing the app at the end of September 2023; the companions went with it.
• Replika, 2023. A February filter update changed many users' companions overnight. The company later let pre-February users go back to the January version of the model, which shows the old personality had never been lost, only switched off.
• GPT-4o, 2026. OpenAI retired GPT-4o from ChatGPT in February 2026 but said "In the API, there are no changes at this time." The model survived; access to it through the app did not.

Our record of AI companion shutdowns lists every case since 2023. The one setup that bears Levy out is a model you run yourself. Open models released under licences such as Apache 2.0 come with a "perpetual" and "irrevocable" licence, and a copy on your own computer does not depend on anyone's servers or business plans. With the files and a front end, the partner can be restarted as long as you keep a copy.

What a symbolic AI wedding can and cannot do

A ceremony can mean a great deal to the person holding it, and nothing stops anyone from having one. It carries no legal rights: no inheritance, no next-of-kin status, no tax or immigration effect, and no protection if the company changes the character. If a partner is involved as well, our guide on whether an AI girlfriend counts as cheating covers where most couples draw the line.