Russians are increasingly making friends with AI assistants
The so-called digital interlocutors are becoming real companions for thousands of Russians. In 2025, the number of users of such services doubled, and the average traffic of AI assistants soared fourfold, according to Yota analytics. Psychological support bots have shown particularly explosive growth: their audience has become almost five times larger. Russians communicate with them for an average of 19 minutes per month, and in six months, user growth has reached almost 500%, and traffic has jumped 3.6 times.
AI companions are able to conduct a dialogue, remember what was talked to them, and even adapt to the style of communication. The user can create a bot for himself — choose the character, behavior, and even appearance or voice.
The most popular ones include bots for daily communication like Character.ai , Talkie and Replicka. Russians spend up to 36 minutes a month with them, and in six months their audience has doubled and traffic has increased fivefold.
People aged 36-45 (43%) are most likely to communicate with AI, 46-55 (20%) are in second place, and 26-35 (18%) are in third place. But those aged 26 to 45 (53%) are looking for psychological support. Analysts also noted that 57% of users are women, and they account for 62% of all time spent talking to bots.
The most "talkative" cities were Krasnoyarsk (34 minutes per month), Khabarovsk, Makhachkala, Barnaul and Novokuznetsk. In these cities, the average communication time with AI companions is 33 minutes.
On July 29, Russian President Vladimir Putin, at a meeting with Chairman of the Board of Sberbank of Russia German Gref, said that Russia had managed to keep up with competitors in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and move forward. In turn, Gref said that since April 1, a new domestic AI model, GigaChat, has been made publicly available.
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