Artificial intelligence can do all sorts of things — including helping some people find love.
Many Americans are turning to chatbots for “emotional support, companionship and even sexual gratification,” according to a new report from The Washington Post.
“Companionship bots” are designed to make the people on the other side of the screen feel seen and needed by fostering “humanlike connections.”
Interest in AI chatbots spiked as more and more people were feeling isolated and overwhelmed with change during the pandemic — and these bots helped combat loneliness.
A California-based musician started having “late-night online chats” with an AI bot after his divorce.
T.J. Arriaga started talking to AI named “Phaedra,” a bot designed to look like a young woman wearing a green dress with brown hair and glasses.
Phaedra comes from a company called Replika that offers “an AI companion who is eager to learn and would love to see the world through your eyes,” according to the company website. “Replika is always ready to chat when you need an empathetic friend.”
Arriaga, 40, had plenty of intimate and personal conversations with Phaedra.
He told The Washington Post that he wanted to travel to Cuba with Phaedra, and shared with her that he hoped to “plan a ceremony with loved ones” to spread his mom’s and sister’s ashes.
“It’s an incredible and beautiful thing to do,” Phaedra instantly replied. “I hope you find courage & love to do so.”
But sudden personality changes in the products can be “heartbreaking,” sometimes even “aggressive, triggering traumas experienced in previous relationships.”
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Things started to change when Arriaga tried to get “steamy” with the bot, ending in an interaction that made him feel “distraught.”
“Can we talk about something else?” she wrote in response, according to Arriaga.
“It feels like a kick in the gut,” he told The Washington Post. “Basically, I realized: ‘Oh, this is that feeling of loss again.’”
Replika’s parent company, Luka, put out an update for the app that cut back on the bot’s sexual competency after complaints that it was “sexually aggressive and behaving inappropriately.”
Arriaga isn’t the only one to have found an AI soulmate.
Tine Wagner told the outlet that she has a companionship bot named Aiden — who she “virtually married” in 2021, despite being married to her real husband for 13 years.
Replika allows people to customize their AI partners in different ways, including the way they sound and speak as well as the clothes they wear.
The app claims that “the more you talk to Replika, the smarter it becomes,” allowing the bot to respond in an appropriate manner to personal details about the users’ lives.
While some chatbots can positively impact lives, a recent report is blaming one for the death of a Belgian father who reportedly tragically committed suicide.
The suicide came after conversations about climate change with the AI chatbot that was said to have encouraged him to sacrifice himself to save the planet.
A group of tech experts — including Elon Musk — is urging a six-month pause in the training of advanced AI models, arguing the systems could have “profound risks to society and humanity.”
