Nearly half of women in their 60s and 70s in Japan now prefer to receive personal advice from an AI rather than another human – the only age group in the survey to make this choice – and the isolation crisis facing the country’s elderly is the unspoken backdrop

At the end of May 2026, the Japan Institute for Promotion of Digital Economy and Community published the results of a survey conducted online in mid-January. The survey asked 1,449 Japanese residents between the ages of 18 and 79 whether they would prefer to consult a human or an artificial intelligence when it comes to interpersonal relationships. The overall results were unremarkable. 45.8 percent of respondents said they would prefer to consult a human. 36.5 percent said they would prefer to consult an AI. The rest gave various other answers.

The unremarkable overall results, on closer inspection, obscured a single demographic finding that the broader Cultural Register has in recent days begun to take more seriously than the standard intake of survey data typically allows. The result is that one particular demographic reversed the overall pattern. 47.8 percent of Japanese women in their 60s and 70s said they would rather consult an AI than a…