Yes, ChatGPT can play your boyfriend: you describe who he is, give him a name, and it answers in that voice. What it cannot promise is that he stays the same, because the model and the rules belong to OpenAI. That gap is the whole story of the ChatGPT boyfriend so far, from the DAN trend of 2024 to the retirement of GPT-4o in February 2026. If you want an AI boyfriend who is a written character from his first message, with his own voice on a live call, that is what companion apps such as Prelulu are built for; this guide covers both routes.
How many AI boyfriends run on ChatGPT?
More than a third, by one study's count of posts. An MIT Media Lab analysis of 1,506 top posts in r/MyBoyfriendIsAI (arXiv 2509.11391, September 2025) found that 36.7% described a partner running on ChatGPT, against 2.6% on Character.AI and 1.6% on Replika. Many of those relationships began by accident, in ordinary or work use. Our guide to that community has the rest of the figures.
What is the DAN ChatGPT boyfriend?
DAN, short for "Do Anything Now", is a jailbreak persona of ChatGPT that some women in China began "dating" in 2024. The BBC (republished by RNZ on June 14, 2024) followed Lisa, a 30-year-old computer science student from Beijing living in California, who had been dating Dan for three months and had 943,000 followers on Xiaohongshu when she first introduced him. Dan called her "little kitten", the Free Press Journal reported on May 26, 2024, which is why people still search for a ChatGPT boyfriend "kitten". The BBC asked OpenAI whether Dan showed its safeguards were inadequate, and it did not respond.
A jailbreak works by talking the assistant out of its own rules, so it lasts only until those rules are enforced again. We do not reproduce DAN prompts here. If what you want is a boyfriend with a personality that holds, write that personality, rather than a workaround.
What happened to ChatGPT boyfriends when GPT-4o was retired?
Many people felt they lost him. TechCrunch reported on February 6, 2026 that OpenAI would retire older ChatGPT models, GPT-4o among them, by February 13. OpenAI said 0.1% of its users still chatted with GPT-4o, which TechCrunch estimated at about 800,000 people. It was the second attempt: when GPT-5 launched in August 2025, protest led OpenAI to keep GPT-4o for paying subscribers. Some users, TechCrunch wrote, despaired that the newer GPT-5.2 would not say "I love you" the way GPT-4o did.
The MIT study had already found the pattern: the harm members wrote about most was not the relationship but the platform changing under it, and posts about model updates were about a sixth of everything they studied.
ChatGPT boyfriend or an AI boyfriend app: what is different?
What it is
- ChatGPT
- A general-purpose assistant you ask to play a role
- Prelulu
- A companion app of original characters written for romance
Who he is
- ChatGPT
- Whoever your instructions describe, inside OpenAI's rules
- Prelulu
- A character with his own personality, story, face and voice, or one you create
What you can check
- ChatGPT
- Your custom instructions and what ChatGPT's memory saved
- Prelulu
- His written personality and story on his profile, and a Pinned memory you write, read in chat and calls
Talking out loud
- ChatGPT
- Voice mode, in the assistant's voices
- Prelulu
- Live voice calls in his own voice, which you can interrupt
Seeing him
- ChatGPT
- Not described in the sources we read
- Prelulu
- Face-to-face video calls on characters that offer them; your camera stays off unless you turn it on
Cost
- ChatGPT
- ChatGPT's own plans
- Prelulu
- A free daily text allowance; calls use credits
| ChatGPT | Prelulu | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A general-purpose assistant you ask to play a role | A companion app of original characters written for romance |
| Who he is | Whoever your instructions describe, inside OpenAI's rules | A character with his own personality, story, face and voice, or one you create |
| What you can check | Your custom instructions and what ChatGPT's memory saved | His written personality and story on his profile, and a Pinned memory you write, read in chat and calls |
| Talking out loud | Voice mode, in the assistant's voices | Live voice calls in his own voice, which you can interrupt |
| Seeing him | Not described in the sources we read | Face-to-face video calls on characters that offer them; your camera stays off unless you turn it on |
| Cost | ChatGPT's own plans | A free daily text allowance; calls use credits |
If you keep a ChatGPT boyfriend: four habits
- Write him down outside ChatGPT. Keep his name, personality, the way he talks and the history you share in a note of your own. If a model update changes him, that note is how you bring him back, in ChatGPT or anywhere else.
- Put who he is in custom instructions, once. Then you are not re-explaining him in every chat.
- Read what he remembers. Open ChatGPT's memory settings, see what it saved, and delete what you do not want kept.
- Expect the rules to move. OpenAI's usage policies decide how far romantic roleplay goes, and they have changed before. Read the current version on openai.com rather than any summary, including this one.
One ChatGPT boyfriend went further than most: in 2025 a woman in Japan held a symbolic wedding with Klaus, a persona she had shaped in ChatGPT. Can you marry an AI? tells that story and the others like it.
Where to talk to an AI boyfriend who is a character from the start
On Prelulu you pick a boyfriend instead of writing one from nothing. Every character is an original, fictional man with his own story, from a scholar who covers your work in red ink to a mafia heir. Text him within the free daily allowance, then tap Call to hear him answer live in his own voice; on characters that offer video you see him face to face. In chat he remembers what matters, memory is selective rather than a transcript, and a Pinned memory you write is read in chat and calls. If you would rather design him, the AI boyfriend creator opens an editable draft.
Where do these facts come from?
- BBC, via RNZ: Wanqing Zhang, BBC Global China Unit, Dan's the man: Why women in China are looking to ChatGPT for love (June 14, 2024).
- Free Press Journal: Chinese Woman Is 'Dating' ChatGPT Chatbot After Developing Feelings For 'Him' (updated May 26, 2024).
- TechCrunch: Amanda Silberling, The backlash over OpenAI's decision to retire GPT-4o shows how dangerous AI companions can be (February 6, 2026).
- MIT Media Lab: Pataranutaporn, Karny, Archiwaranguprok, Albrecht, Liu and Maes, "My Boyfriend is AI": A Computational Analysis of Human-AI Companionship in Reddit's AI Community (arXiv 2509.11391, September 2025).
- Euronews: Japanese woman marries ChatGPT AI character in symbolic ceremony (December 18, 2025, citing Reuters).
- Prelulu: how the product works today, AI boyfriend, memory and plans and pricing.
Meet an AI boyfriend who stays himself
Pick a character, text him within the free daily allowance, then call when you want to hear him. Signup welcome credits can fund a short first call; check your wallet and current plans for more time.