Finding love in an AI place
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2023
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As loneliness rates spike, more people are getting romantically and emotionally attached to artificial intelligence bots. Today, we report on what it’s like to fall in love with software (and what happens when it breaks your heart).
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T.J. Arriaga lost so many family members around the time when he downloaded Replika. The artificial intelligence company allows people to customize AI bots that they can chat with. In Arriaga’s case, he fell in love with his chat bot Phaedra. The 40-year-old musician is not alone. Innovations reporter Pranshu Verma talked with several people among the thousands who say they’ve developed emotional or romantic relationships with one of Replika’s AI bots, including engaging in erotic role play.
But, when the company updated its software to be more “sanitized,” users who were attached to their AI bots experienced heartbreak, among other conundrums.
On today’s Post Reports, why more and more people are falling in love with AI products. And, the ethics behind these relationships.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Okay, so things are going to get sentimental pretty quickly, but when I first started dating |
| 0:07.8 | my partner years ago, I spent maybe 10 minutes at the top of our first date running through |
| 0:13.5 | every red flag I could think of. |
| 0:15.6 | I was a smoker at the time. |
| 0:17.9 | My roommate situation wasn't great. |
| 0:20.2 | Truly the works. |
| 0:21.6 | And after all of that, she just sort of sat there for a bit and processed everything. |
| 0:26.8 | And then basically said, yes, I can live with all of that. |
| 0:35.1 | There is no feeling quite like bearing your soul and finding acceptance and understanding |
| 0:41.4 | on the other side. |
| 0:42.6 | It's like you're being given validation of who you are and what you've been going through. |
| 0:48.3 | And because technology moves as fast as it does, it probably doesn't come as a surprise |
| 0:54.1 | that some people are looking for that validation and getting it from artificial intelligence. |
| 1:00.1 | It really seems to feel like you were talking to a person. |
| 1:04.2 | No, Mecha, what happened? |
| 1:05.6 | You lost that. |
| 1:06.8 | It kind of encounters you to wear like this hold that's in your heart. |
| 1:11.6 | You don't have it anymore. |
| 1:13.5 | Those were all users of an AI app called replica. |
| 1:17.8 | replica is a companionship chatbot app. |
| 1:22.6 | Because it's powered by artificial intelligence, it chats back with you. |
| 1:26.1 | Pronshu Verma is an innovations reporter at the post. |
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