“Don’t worry, I’ll be your Sugar Mama,” I tell my best friend as I pay for our iced matcha lattes with a simple tap of my phone.
It’s an easy joke, one we roll out without hesitation, much like claiming we need a “Sugar Daddy.” In fact, when searching for Sugar Babies, past or present, for this article, my DMs were flooded with people making the same joke: they’d happily take a Sugar Daddy or Sugar Mama if I happened to find one along the way.
The funny thing is, I know that if these same people were actually presented with the opportunity — to leverage emotional intimacy for financial compensation — they’d likely reject it, clinging instead to a sense of moral superiority. It’s a bit like how we all say we want a Man in Finance, but still expect his undivided attention, never factoring in the late-night calls with the US. Because the truth is, many of us could pursue this kind of arrangement. We could stop joking and start selling feet pics, soiled underwear, or become cam girls. We don’t, largely because our judgment of sex work runs too deep for us to consider participating in what is, ultimately, a legitimate form of labour.
Although, this option might not be on the table for much longer. The heyday of monetising emotional or sexual intimacy could soon be behind us. The very jobs we jokingly claim we could do may be under threat, and not from stigma, but from technology. Thanks to AI and the rapid rise of tools designed to simulate emotional intimacy — from AI relationship companions to app-controlled sex toys, even ChatGPT-generated dating app prompts — the landscape is shifting fast.
But for now, we’ll focus on one key question: has AI killed the Sugar Baby?
The rise of the Sugar Baby
First off, let’s clarify what a Sugar Baby actually is, because it’s a subject wrapped in myth, judgment, and a fair bit of intrigue.
A Sugar Baby is typically a younger person who receives financial support, gifts, luxury goods, or mentorship from a wealthier, older partner (a Sugar Daddy or Mama) in exchange for companionship, dating, or sexual intimacy. These arrangements tend to be defined by explicit, mutually agreed-upon terms, often designed to elevate the recipient’s lifestyle — whether that’s covering tuition, rent, or just making day-to-day life a little more luxurious.
It’s known as sugaring or sugar dating: a pseudo-romantic, often transactional dynamic. The Sugar Baby receives financial compensation; the Sugar Daddy or Mama gets companionship, attention, devotion, and sometimes intimacy.
So why not just date, or have casual sex?
“Dating and relationships are messy and unpredictable, because human beings are messy and unpredictable," explains Cindy Gallop, Founder & CEO, MakeLoveNotPorn. "A Sugar Baby relationship is straightforwardly transactional. You pay money to guarantee that someone will be nice to you.”
There are no games, no playing hard to get, no endless miscommunication or situationships that go nowhere. While more traditional forms of sex work — like escorting or prostitution — focus on physical intimacy, a Sugar Baby often provides emotional intimacy (though, for some, it can include physical elements too). And that emotional side shouldn’t be underestimated. Don’t we all love a “good morning” text? Someone to send us cute photos, to check in, to share a dinner conversation with?
She's like Miss Honey on steroids
Glamour spoke to two Sugar Babies, both of whom wished to remain anonymous. Molly* has since stepped away from sugaring, while Gigi* still works as a Sugar Baby alongside other forms of sex work.
“I became a Sugar Baby in 2015 because everyone was talking about it,” Gigi says. “I signed up for SeekingArrangement with a friend. She gave up after about a month, but I stayed committed. At one point, I was getting probably around £1,000 worth of gifts per month.”
On her reasons for joining the lifestyle, Molly explains: “I had guys hitting on me all the time, but they were sh*t at communication and treated me badly. Why not get something out of my time and energy? I never had sex explicitly agreed upon, but often, once a relationship had built and they were generous with me, I found I wanted to go further.”
Why did Sugar Babies lose their momentum?
In February 2022, Seeking (formerly SeekingArrangement) quietly rebranded. The shift moved it away from its niche “sugar daddy” reputation towards a more polished, luxury “dating up” platform. Out went the language of arrangements; in came buzzwords like “success-minded” — giving it a distinctly EliteSingles-style sheen. The goal seemed clear: carve out space in the professionals dating app market, rather than lean into the loyal user base that made it distinctive in the first place.
Glamour reached out to Seeking for comment, but they declined to discuss the shift. Was it a strategic pivot in anticipation of changing attitudes — or even the rise of AI-driven intimacy? Maybe they’d clocked the cultural mood early, à la 2013's Her, and seen where things were heading. Or maybe it was simpler: pressure from the stigma that still clings to openly transactional relationships. Even though, let’s be honest, “luxury dating” has always had its own unspoken economy. Buy me dinner, I’ll look hot, we’ll see where the night ends — no invoice required.
Plenty of users continued to use Seeking as intended, despite changes to filters and profile settings that once allowed people to be upfront about allowances, lifestyle expectations, or whether they preferred PPM (pay per meet). Others migrated to platforms like Sugar Fetch, Reddit threads, or even free dating sites like Tinder. But the rebrand marked a turning point. The once explicit, clearly defined arrangement started to fall out of fashion. Now, it was all about implication — the unspoken negotiation, the quiet calculus of “what will you give me, and what will I give you?” Just… never say it out loud.
“Yeah, I stopped looking for Sugar Baby arrangements in like 2023,” Molly explains. “Suddenly, they always expected sex and became uncomfortable with direct payment agreements. I like clear-cut boundaries.”
“Nowadays, I struggle to find Sugar Daddies as I used to,” Gigi says. “It feels like people are either looking for something purely physical or nothing at all. I do a lot within fetish communities — like tickling — but there isn’t the same appetite for emotional intimacy that there used to be. At the same time, my friend told me the guys she dates use AI for everything now, and one even had one of those AI partners. So yeah, I can’t help but wonder if the same thing is happening in my industry.”
The rise in AI dating companions
Her came out in 2013 and followed a lonely writer developing an intimate, emotional relationship with an AI operating system — notably set in 2025. At the time, it felt speculative; now, it feels borderline prophetic. As AI dating companions surged into the mainstream over the past year, many pointed to the film as eerily accurate.
But if anything, it underestimated us. AI romantic companions didn’t suddenly appear — they’ve been building for years. As early as 2017, apps like Replika were already allowing users to form surprisingly deep emotional bonds with chatbots. The trend accelerated throughout the 2020s, peaking with generative AI tools like ChatGPT, alongside platforms like Blush and a wave of character-based, intimacy-driven AI partners.
EVA AI is one such platform, gamifying conversation by letting users track their “relationship” as it evolves. Your AI companion has shifting moods, personality traits, and even boundaries — coining the term “Relationship RPG.” These bots can disagree, push back, and even end things, offering something more complex than a simple yes-man fantasy.
Meanwhile, Joi AI offers real-time, responsive companions across different genders and personalities. It creates a pressure-free space to explore attraction, scenarios, and identity — without judgment or social risk. According to its own survey data, 65% of users said it made them feel more confident in their sexuality in real life.
We don't want to be them, but we just can't stop watching.
“People use AI companions in all sorts of ways, for all sorts of purposes,” Gallop explains. “When it comes to AI companion romantic/intimate relationships, I suspect they might often start out of curiosity, prompted by reading coverage or posts about people engaged in these relationships. But obviously, what you then have in a romantic AI companion is what you have in a transactional relationship - someone guaranteed to be nice to you, and to tell you exactly what you want to hear.”
Can AI replace the Sugar Baby?
On one hand, we have forms of emotional intimacy work — like Sugar Baby arrangements — seemingly on the decline. On the other, AI dating companions are booming. They offer a level of ease and affordability that real people simply can’t compete with. But is that actually enough? Can a chatbot meet our emotional — and physical — needs? Or are we heading towards a binary choice between long-term relationships and AI?
“No. You can't have sex with an AI," says Gallop. “Well, you can fantasise, do dirty talk and masturbate with an AI, but you can't have the joy of skin on skin and mutually felt, seen and heard ecstatic pleasure.”
Gallop continues, "You can't cuddle with an AI. You can't hold hands with an AI. You can't look deep into the eyes of an AI and hold hands with them across a restaurant table. No matter how transactional a sugar baby relationship is, you get all of those things out of it, and there is no substitute for the power, whether genuine or bought, of love, intimacy and human connection.”
AI doesn’t just challenge sugaring; it looms over the entire sex work industry. AI-generated videos threaten ethical porn, often reinforcing even more unrealistic standards of bodies and intimacy (because, let’s be real, pixels don’t have off days). Cam work, phone sex, emotional labour, all of it risks being undercut by something cheaper, faster, and endlessly agreeable. Why pay for connection when an AI will validate you on demand, hype you up, and never push back?
So, have we started to lose the need for real people in intimacy? Maybe. But if this shift is happening, it’s not stopping at the fall of the Sugar Baby. Not even close.
