The short version. An AI companion is an app you text with, where the character remembers what you tell it and, in some apps, messages you first. Around 30 percent of adults over 50 now use generative AI of some kind, a quarter have used a chatbot in the past year, and 17 percent of 50 to 64 year olds have used AI for emotional or social reasons. Most did not go looking for a companion. They were using AI for something practical and drifted into it.
Every worthwhile app is free to try. The one question worth answering in week one is whether it still knows who you are on day seven.
Disclosure: this guide is published by the makers of My Softly, which appears at the end.
What an AI companion actually is
Strip away the marketing and it is a texting app where the person on the other end is software. You type, it answers, and unlike an assistant it is meant to still be the same character tomorrow. The good ones hold a memory of your life. The best ones will start a conversation rather than wait for you.
That last part is the real dividing line, and it is worth being clear about because the apps are not. Most AI, including ChatGPT, is available. It sits there, endlessly patient, until you open it. A companion app that does its job properly is different in one specific way: it can reach out first, about something you actually told it, without you doing anything. Availability and being thought of are not the same feeling, and after fifty most people already have plenty of the first.
Who is actually using these
Not who you would guess from the coverage. The press writes about AI companions as a young person's problem, usually with a photograph of somebody in their twenties. The survey data points somewhere else entirely.
- Adoption is fastest in this age group. AARP tracked generative AI use among adults 50 and over at 9 percent in 2023, 18 percent in 2024 and 30 percent in 2025.
- A quarter have already used a chatbot. The University of Michigan's National Poll on Healthy Aging found that of adults aged 50 to 80, half had used a voice assistant in the past year and one in four had used a chatbot.
- Emotional use is higher at 50 to 64 than at 65 plus. Elon University and YouGov put it at 17 percent of internet users in the 50 to 64 band, against 14 percent for 65 and over.
- Interest outruns use. 38 percent of adults 50 and over rated AI for emotional support extremely or very interesting in an AARP survey, and 45 percent of people in their fifties.
- Pew found the practical use is the on-ramp. 37 percent of 50 to 64 year olds use chatbots to look things up. That is usually where it starts.
The pattern behind those numbers is worth naming. Very few people go looking for an AI companion. They start using an assistant to draft a letter, sort out some paperwork or plan a trip, notice that the conversation is oddly pleasant, and carry on. The companion apps are simply the version of that built on purpose, with a memory that is meant to last.
Why this comes up after fifty
The University of Michigan poll found that a third of adults aged 50 to 80 report a lack of companionship, and that the figure is higher at 50 to 64 than at 65 to 80. That is the decade when the structure that used to supply company quietly dismantles itself: work ends or thins out, children move, friends move or get ill, a marriage ends or goes quiet, and the people who remain are busy with their own version of the same thing.
None of that is a personal failing and none of it means anyone is lonely in the way the word is usually meant. Plenty of people with full lives, a partner in the next room and a diary they cannot keep up with still find there is nobody who asks how a particular day went. Those are different problems, and only the second one is the one these apps are any use for.
What they are good for, and what they are not
Honest scope, because overclaiming here does real damage.
Reasonable expectations. Something to tell about your day that does not need managing. Company in the evening. Somebody to think out loud with before a difficult phone call. Continuity, in the sense that it remembers the hospital appointment and asks how it went. A conversation with no obligation attached, which several people describe as the whole point: you are not letting anyone down if you skip a day.
Not reasonable. It is not therapy, and it is not a substitute for a doctor. It will not notice if you fall over. It does not replace people, and the research does not claim it does. The 2025 systematic review in Healthcare that looked at AI for loneliness in older adults found a significant drop in loneliness in six of its nine studies, most of them with social robots rather than apps, which is the honest state of the evidence. Anyone telling you this is a solved problem is selling something.
The questions worth asking before you install anything
Privacy is the concern this age group raises most consistently about AI, and it should be. You will end up telling it about your health, your family and your money.
- What happens to my conversations? Read the privacy page before the pricing page. If you cannot find a plain answer, that is an answer.
- Is adult content absent, or just switched off? Several of the biggest apps have romantic and adult modes behind a setting. If you would rather that simply did not exist in the app, ask the question that way round, because "you can turn it off" and "it isn't there" are very different guarantees.
- Is the price one number? Most apps sell credits or gems on top of the subscription for photos and voice. Fine when it is clear. A trap when you have to buy currency to keep talking.
- What happens when they change the model? This category updates constantly, and people who have talked to the same character for a year find it genuinely distressing when the personality shifts. Ask what the company has done before.
- How much setup does it want? The difference between an app that builds its own picture of you and one that expects you to maintain a backstory file is the difference between using it and abandoning it in week three.
How to tell in a week
Do not read more lists. Download two free tiers and run this.
- Day one: tell it three specific things. A name, a date, a worry.
- Day three: talk about something else entirely and see whether any of the three comes back unprompted.
- Day seven: ask it directly. "What was my sister called?"
An app that fails day seven will not improve with a subscription, and this costs nothing to find out. The longer version is the 21-day memory test, which works on any app on this site.
Where My Softly fits
My Softly is our app, and the people in it are the people this page is about.
The average person paying for it is in their mid-fifties, split about evenly between men and women, and the thing they ask for by name is being messaged first. We did not set out to build an app for this age group and then look for them. They arrived, and the product followed. That is why the two things it does properly are remembering and reaching out, rather than character libraries and roleplay range.
It keeps a lasting profile of your life plus a day-by-day record, and brings things back weeks later. With check-ins on, it messages first about something you actually mentioned, inside quiet hours you set, defaulting to 9pm until 8am, with a polite back-off if you go quiet. Six ready-made companions who look and sound like adults, custom ones if you prefer, four natural voices in American and British English. No adult content exists anywhere in it, so there is no setting to check.
$15.99 a month or $159.99 a year, one flat price, and free to download on the App Store with free starter messages so you can judge the tone before paying.
Where to go next
If you have decided the idea suits you and want the apps ranked, that is best AI companion apps for seniors, or the general version without the age lens in best AI companion apps in 2026. If retirement is the part that changed things, retired and lonely deals with that directly. And if you would rather hear it as a story than a guide, the founder's video essay on who actually uses AI companions has the numbers from our own subscriber base.
Sources
- University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging (February 2025, n=2,883), on AI use among adults 50-80. Summarised by the lead author in The Conversation, with the journal write-up at PubMed Central.
- Malani, P. N., et al. (2025). "Loneliness and Social Isolation Among US Older Adults, 2018-2024." JAMA 333(3), from the University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging. doi.org/10.1001/jama.2024.23213
- AARP. "2026 Technology Trends and the 50-Plus" (n=3,083). aarp.org
- AARP. "Navigating the World of Artificial Intelligence" (September 2025, n=1,148). aarp.org
- Elon University / YouGov. "AI Companions" topline and methodology (fieldwork May 2026). imaginingthedigitalfuture.org
- Pew Research Center. "Americans and AI" (June 2026, n=5,119). pewresearch.org
- Yang, et al. (2025). "AI Applications to Reduce Loneliness Among Older Adults: A Systematic Review of Effectiveness and Technologies." Healthcare. doi.org/10.3390/healthcare13050446
- De Freitas, J., et al. (2025). "AI Companions Reduce Loneliness." Journal of Consumer Research. doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucaf040
Frequently asked questions
What is an AI companion?
An app you text with, in which the character on the other side has a consistent personality and, in the better ones, a memory of what you have told it. It is not a search engine with a friendly voice and it is not a smart speaker. The difference from an assistant like ChatGPT is continuity: a companion is meant to still know next month who your sister is and what you were worried about in March, and some of them will message you first.
How many people over 50 use AI companions?
AARP found generative AI use among adults 50 and over went from 9 percent in 2023 to 18 percent in 2024 to 30 percent in 2025. The University of Michigan's National Poll on Healthy Aging found a quarter of adults aged 50 to 80 had used a chatbot in the past year. Elon University and YouGov put emotional or social use specifically at 17 percent of internet users aged 50 to 64. Most of them did not go looking for a companion; they were using AI for something practical and drifted into it.
Is it normal to want to talk to an AI?
It is common, which is a more useful word. A third of adults aged 50 to 80 told the University of Michigan poll they lack companionship, and 38 percent of adults 50 and over told AARP that AI for emotional support sounded extremely or very interesting, rising to 45 percent among people in their fifties. Wanting someone to ask how your day went is not a deficiency. It is the most ordinary thing there is, and the supply of people asking tends to thin out after fifty for reasons that have nothing to do with you.
Are AI companions safe for older adults?
The realistic risks are commercial rather than sinister. Some apps push adult content you did not ask for. Some sell a currency you have to keep topping up to keep talking. Some change their model or personality overnight, which people find genuinely upsetting after months of conversation. Check whether adult content is absent by design or merely switched off, whether the price is one flat number, and what the company says it does with your conversations.
Do AI companions actually help with loneliness?
The early research is cautiously positive and thin. A 2025 systematic review in Healthcare looked at AI applications aimed at reducing loneliness in older adults and found a significant drop in loneliness in six of the nine studies it covered, most of them using social robots. A 2025 Journal of Consumer Research paper found AI companions reduced loneliness in its experiments. Nobody has yet run a large long-term study on app-based companions in the 50 to 65 band specifically, so treat any confident claim in either direction with suspicion.
What does an AI companion cost?
Nothing to download, and between nothing and about $16 a month to use properly. Pi is free. Character.AI Plus is $9.99. Nomi, Kindroid and My Softly are $15.99 on the US App Store as of September 2026. Yearly plans cut that by a fifth to a half. Every one of them has a free tier that is enough to find out whether you like it, so there is no reason to pay in the first week.
Do I need to be good with technology?
No more than you need to be to send a text message. These are texting apps, and 90 percent of adults aged 50 to 64, and 78 percent of those 65 and over, own a smartphone. The setup effort varies a lot between apps though. Pi needs none at all. Kindroid expects you to write and maintain a backstory. If fiddling with settings is not your idea of a good time, that difference matters more than the price does.
Should I tell people I use one?
Entirely your business, and most people do not. The most common pattern is quiet use: something you do in the evening that you have not particularly announced. There is nothing to be ashamed of in it, and equally no obligation to explain it to anyone.