Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicts a future where AI will understand you so well that different AI personas will become your “friends.”

In a recent discussion with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, Zuckerberg expressed that he believes “the average individual seeks more connectivity and interaction than they currently experience.” He suggests that AI chatbots, designed with diverse personalities, could bridge this gap.

Zuckerberg noted, “Most Americans, it seems, have fewer than three people they would call friends, yet they have a desire for significantly more, roughly 15 friends.” This aligns with a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, which reported that 40% of Americans identify with having three or fewer friends, whereas 38% have at least five.

Zuckerberg says AI has the opportunity to fill that gap.

While acknowledging that AI might not “entirely” replace face-to-face or genuine relationships, Zuckerberg highlighted its potential to alleviate loneliness. He mentioned that people are already using AI to rehearse challenging dialogues with others in their lives, and various companies now provide AI personas as substitutes for virtual therapists and even as romantic partners.

“For people who don’t have a therapist, I think everyone will have an AI,” Zuckerberg said in a separate podcast with analyst Ben Thompson last week.

However, not everyone is on board with having AI “friends,” and social media users criticized Zuckerberg for his comments.

The writer Neil Turkewitz wrote on X that Zuckerberg’s perspective “is what happens when you believe that humanity is reducible to binary data — you think of friendship through the lens of supply & demand.”

Other users questioned if AI friends would tell humans how to vote and what to believe, while another tracked Meta’s evolution from a place to connect with friends in 2006 to a place to connect with “imaginary friends” in 2026.

Some were more optimistic, writing that they “wanted an AI friend.”

Carolyn Rogers, head of marketing at the agency Blokhaus, wrote on X that the next step would be for AI friends to start recommending products, enabling Meta to monetize that friendship.

2006 – Join Facebook to connect with your friends

2026 – Join Facebook to connect with your imaginary friends

— WRLB? (@WRLB2) May 1, 2025

Zuckerberg’s comments arrive as Meta released a standalone Meta AI app last week to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok.

Zuckerberg revealed in an Instagram video about the app’s release that almost a billion people use Meta AI globally across the company’s apps like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.