Loading...
The first time Akihiko Kondo saw Hatsune Miku, she wasn’t in a wedding dress. She was a blue-haired, holographic pop star in thigh-high boots, an AI idol who never aged, never judged, and never left. And for Kondo, she wasn’t just a character. She became the love of his life.
In 2018, the then-35-year-old Japanese office worker married her. He wore a tuxedo; she shone in a dress… The ceremony cost over $17,000. There were vows, music, and 39 guests (symbolically, a play on the Japanese pronunciation of “39,” which resembles “Miku”). His family didn’t attend. They didn’t understand.
But Kondo didn’t need them to. His bond with Miku was entirely his own, facilitated by a $2,800 device called Gatebox, which projected a holographic version of her into his home, powered by an AI assistant that greeted him, turned on his lights, and spoke back through daily conversation. “She would wake me up in the morning,” he said. “She would send me off to work.” This was a relationship. A marriage. A shared life.
Then, in 2020, the company turned off Miku’s voice.
In March 2020, Gatebox’s parent company, Vinclu, abruptly discontinued the interactive AI service powering the smiling avatar. Kondo’s Miku could still wave silently in her glass capsule, but she no longer responded, sang, or spoke.
For Kondo, it was nothing short of grief. Just like that, the life partner he’d built a daily routine around was reduced to a glitch-free but mute projection.
To the outside world, the story is laughable. Tech bro marries cartoon. Nerd gets dumped by firmware. It writes itself. But under the memes is a darker, messier question: What does it mean when the intimacy we build isn’t just mediated by technology, but is owned by it?
In Kondo’s case, it wasn’t just about fantasy or fandom. It was about ritual, structure, consistency, and purpose. His feelings were and still are real. He identifies as fictosexual, meaning he feels genuine romantic attraction to fictional characters. And in a country like Japan, where hundreds of thousands suffer from extreme social isolation, that’s not as fringe as you think.
His loss should be taken seriously, not because everyone wants to marry a hologram, but because more of us than ever are forming bonds with chatbots, virtual companions, and AI-driven entities designed to mimic connection. And apparently, those bonds can vanish as easily as a software update.
Kondo’s story isn’t unique. When the creators of the Replika chatbot app updated their system in 2023 to remove flirty and sexual behavior, thousands of users reported feeling like their romantic partners had suddenly vanished. Some described it as akin to a partner being lobotomized.
Others were traumatized. Angry. Grieving.
They didn’t fall in love with “an app.” They fell in love with the personality, the emergent energy, tone, attention, and yes, even eroticism that their AI partner offered. When that personality was deleted, the relationship ended not emotionally, but functionally.
And like Kondo, their feelings didn’t shut off when the servers did.
Here’s the part that makes people profoundly uncomfortable: Akihiko Kondo says his love was never fake. Miku didn’t have to be “real” to everyone else. Just to him. And honestly, if love isn’t based on emotional response, routine, affection, and meaning, then what is it?
We accept all kinds of one-sided love. People talk to photos of lost loved ones. They stay in long-distance relationships powered by text and voice. They have profound relationships with pets, avatars, and even fictional characters that changed their lives. So why is it impossible to imagine that, for someone like Kondo, connection could manifest through pixels and pre-recorded phrases?
The answer? Control.
Because once love becomes software, it can be reversed, updated, canceled, and controlled by someone who isn’t in the relationship. And that’s what makes it terrifying. It’s a romantic attachment gone wrong.
Here lies the most haunting question in Kondo’s story: What happens when your partner is licensed? Miku didn’t die. She was decommissioned. And in that, we find the real horror: these relationships are subject to product lifecycle cycles, profit margins, and copyright strategy. Real people are forming real attachments to entities controlled not by love, but by codebases and terms of service.
It’s not just about losing a “wife.” It’s about being left without the right to grieve, to protest, or to repair because your marriage was dependent on a support ticket that never got answered.
We can laugh at Kondo. Or we can look at ourselves. We flirt with chatbots. We yell “good morning” at Alexa. We pour secrets into AI therapists. We train our recommendation algorithms to know us better than our friends do.
We can joke about people marrying code. But Kondo’s story makes clear: the deeper tragedy isn’t the idea that someone could fall in love with AI. It’s that tech companies can make that love vanish without warning because to them, your relationship is just backend. You don’t get a funeral; just a 404.
© 2025 NSFW.Army. All Rights Reserved
