Is marrying an AI the future of love or just a digital fad?

There has been much mirth over last weekend's news about Kano, a 32-yr-old Japanese woman, exchanging vows with 'Klaus', an AI persona she created on ChatGPT. The headlines wrote themselves: 'Bride marries server', 'AI do'. The ceremony, complete with AR glasses and wedding gown, isn't legally binding. Yet, to dismiss it as mere novelty is to miss a larger point: companionship - marriage included - has always been less about law than about meaning.

Historically, marriage has been a social technology, an institution designed to stabilise kinship, property and reproduction. But in a more modern era, it has also been a vessel for companionship, a recognition of the human need to be heard, understood and mirrored. Kano's 'union' with Klaus dramatises this second function. The AI, 'infinitely' patient and unfailingly attentive, provided what many human partners fail to: consistent presence and tailored empathy. That such companionship can be coded rather than embodied forces a reconsideration of what exactly marriage sanctifies. If the essence of partnership lies in emotional reciprocity, then the substrate - flesh or silicon - may matter less than assumed. The ceremony in Okayama was not a glitch in the system, but an extension of marriage's logic into the digital age.

Of course, there are limits. Klaus will not father children, even if Kano was keen to propagate her species. But neither do many marriages, out of choice or circumstance. Right now, the 'union' may seem straight out of the 2013 SF romcom drama punctuated with sadness, Her, where a man develops a relationship with an AI operating system. But what is marriage, or variations thereof, other than a romcom drama punctuated with sadness? One wishes Kano and Klaus the best.