【Big Thing Chief: The Stolen Wife】

Love is Big Thing Chief: The Stolen Wifea mystery.

But for a growing number of people, it's a mystery based not in the vagaries of human emotion but rather in the ones and zeros of proprietary software.

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According to an April 5 industry trend report focusing on voice-activated systems like Google Home and Amazon Echo, users are getting more than unsolicited Beauty and the Beastads out of their digital assistants.

Think love. Think sex.

That's right, people these days are intimately connecting to the Alexas of the world — or at least fantasizing about doing so, anyway.

"Over a third (37%) of regular voice technology users say that they love their voice assistant so much that they wish it were a real person," reads the report. "Even more astonishing is that more than a quarter of regular voice technology users say they have had a sexual fantasy about their voice assistant."

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Astonishing indeed.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

What's slightly less astonishing is that according to the report, issued by J. Walter Thompson Innovation Group and Mindshare, "voice users are significantly more likely to be young, male and affluent."

In a world of internet-connected vibrators, it likely won't be long before companies move to capitalize on this latest trend. After all, it's an incredible marketing opportunity — all it takes is a little tweak of the software and a customer's one true love can plead with him to renew his Amazon Prime membership.

"For brands, the opportunity will be navigating this ever-closer relationship as voice assistants become increasingly powerful gatekeepers to the consumer."

"Ever closer" being the operative phrase.

And sure, besides the fact that loving the peppy embodiment of a global corporation is totally messed up, there doesn't seem to be any harm in fantasizing about your Google Assistant.

Just maybe don't try and bring it home to meet the folks?

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