Relationships: How real are they?

Let's be honest with ourselves here when we say that we probably spend almost as much time, if not more time, communicating with people and socialising through technology than face-to-face. Obviously, this was not the case a century ago.
So a thought came to me.
Say, you're posting on an online forum and you find someone you share interests with. You start chatting with that person over instant messaging. Pretty soon, you find yourself texting them about all your littlest thoughts, like "omg that film was teh sux, what do u think?" and "i hate espresso, dont u?". Then one day you finally propose, "hey wanna skype?" They refuse, and point out the fact that they are not, in fact, a real person, but just a cleverly designed AI.
What would you do? Would the fact that they're not human completely change your relationship with them? Or maybe you should ask yourself, how different is he/she to a human after all? Hell, you sure couldn't tell the difference.
I feel this may become a legitimate social issue before long. Anyone have any thoughts? Better question, is anyone still reading this?

Hi

This blog's probably been read some 1 times since my last post, so for my 1 loyal follower, I'm back! Well actually probably not, my life isn't interesting enough/I'm not self-centred enough to become a ritualistic blogger. Granted, I do frequently come across information that may be useful to the general public, but hell I'm way too lazy to post stuff like that.