It might be important for AI strategy to track approx how many people have daily interactions with AI boyfriends / girlfriends. Or, in more generalized form, how many people place a lot of emotional weight and trust in AIs (& which ones they trust, and on what topics).

This could be a major vector via which AIs influence politics, get followers to do things for them, and generally cross the major barrier. The AIs could be misaligned & scheming, or could be acting as tools of some scheme-y humans, or somewhere in between.

(Here I'm talking about AIs which have many powerful capabilities, but aren't able to act on the world themselves e.g. via nanotechnology or robot bodies — this might happen for a variety of reasons.)