31% find AI conversations as or more satisfying than human. 50% distrust AI information/advice. But 23% of those who trust AI companions trust them "completely"
What are the safety signals?
33% report AI companions did or said something that made them uncomfortable. 24% admitted sharing personal information (names, locations)
What is Adult Demographics?
Average AI companion user: approximately 25-28 years old. 60-70% under age 30 across major platforms. Replika skews male (65-72%) and older
What is Regional Distribution?
Strategic implication: If minors are core users, regulation is not optional risk. It becomes existential.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
