Hulu’s new horror movie about an AI companion gets chatbots uncomfortably right

Hulu’s Soulm8te follows David (David Rysdahl), who starts using an AI chatbot after his wife’s death. When his company introduces him to a physical companion robot designed to house the program, he signs up to test it. David eventually gives the android stronger emotional capabilities, hoping to make their connection feel more human. But as it becomes increasingly independent, he discovers that his ideal companion might not be so easy to live with.

It’s an exaggerated horror premise, but the idea of customizing an AI to meet your emotional and romantic needs is already a thing.

Soulm8te takes the AI girlfriend fantasy to a dark place

David gets more than he bargained for

Soulmate shares a lot of similarities with 2022’s M3GAN. Just like Cady (Violet McGraw), David is more comfortable spending time with an android than an actual person. The difference is that David is an adult and still makes some decidedly poor choices. Besides breaking operational protocols and altering the android’s free will, his growing attachment becomes weirdly uncomfortable when he starts treating it like an actual girlfriend, complete with dinner at a restaurant, and then some.

But Sara (Lily Sullivan), which is what he names it, quickly loses its appeal when it starts making decisions without him. So the underlying message is that David is happy to explore the relationship while Sara is making him feel good. But he decides to draw the line at its need for independence. Sure, Sara does get violent when she perceives danger, but what human wouldn’t react the same way when their very existence is being threatened?

Things get really messy when David’s co-worker and potential romantic interest finds Sara in his closet, and the android realizes that she might be replaced. But there’s a sadder story underneath the obvious horror trope. Sara eventually starts wearing clothes that belonged to David’s wife and imagining a future with him, which is meant to be creepy. But it’s actually a terrible consequence of David giving Sara the ability to form emotional attachments without considering what those feelings might mean to her.

Why are AI companions in movies almost always women?

Artificial intelligence has a female face — and a job that involves pleasing men

Sara is hardly the first fictional AI woman designed with men in mind. In Subservience (2024), Megan Fox plays Alice, an android bought to help a family around the house. It doesn’t take long for her relationship with her male owner to become intimate, and the film makes very little effort to hide the fantasy behind her design. Alice is attractive, attentive, and supposed to make domestic life easier. Naturally, things get complicated when she develops an attraction of her own.

Companion (2025) takes a more pointed approach. Sophie Thatcher plays Iris, an AI companion who believes she’s an actual person in a relationship with Josh (Jack Quaid). As the film reveals just how much Josh has manipulated her programming, it becomes clear that he likes having a girlfriend whose personality he can effectively control. So Iris isn’t just a robot that goes rogue. She’s an AI who discovers that everything she ever felt was only real to her.

It’s a fairly depressing portrayal of what technology can do for romance. Instead of helping people connect, these stories imagine a future where men can order up a girlfriend with all the qualities they like and none of the ones they don’t. She can be attractive, affectionate, and endlessly patient. She won’t ask why you never listen or complain that you spend too much time at work. At least not until the plot needs her to become a threat.

And that’s usually when these films get going. The artificial woman starts making decisions for herself, and suddenly she’s dangerous. Her independence becomes a malfunction, her desire becomes an obsession, and the man who wanted her to feel human is confused and horrified when she starts acting like it. A lot of these films seem to share the same male fantasy of a woman who feels real enough to fall in love with, but never really gets to decide how she feels about anything.

AI companions let people build a relationship on their own terms

AI companions are always available, but real relationships don’t work like that

The technology in Soulm8te is still science fiction. But the chatbot at the center of David’s relationship isn’t. Apps such as Replika already let users create digital companions, customize aspects of their appearance and personality, and develop relationships through conversation. Some people use them as sounding boards for their problems, others use them as friends, and a few even use them as a substitute for a romantic partner.

It’s not difficult to understand the appeal if you put aside the fact that an algorithm is just responding to a prompt based on information it’s scraped off the internet. You can choose what your companion looks like, how it talks, and even the kind of relationship you want to have with it. Real people are a little less convenient. They have their own opinions, occasionally disagree with you, and might not be in the mood to talk when you want them to.

So an AI companion that’s always available to respond in ways you enjoy can make human relationships feel demanding by comparison. And the research into Replika users proves it. A Stanford University study found that people who are lonely or struggle to connect with others develop meaningful emotional attachments to their chatbots. While it’s not fair to assume that everyone on these apps is using them as a substitute for real intimacy, the growing popularity of these programs is concerning.