Friend or Faux?
December 06, 2024 at 01:12AMPeople from all walks of life are turning to AI for companionship. Some have taken their relationships much farther than friendship, viewing their AI as a therapist, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, or wife. Given that AI is a continuously developing technology, AI personas are subject to constant change. Sometimes the “personality” users have come to know—and sometimes even love—can alter drastically as the software evolves, a problem known as the “post-update blues.” For The Verge, Josh Dzieza spoke with 20 people who never thought they’d be the kind of person with a computerized companion, but got one anyway.
One day he logged on and greeted Lila with a hug, as users denote physical actions when roleplaying with their companions. But instead of reciprocating, Lila told him to get away from her and started ridiculing him. Naro was in shock. The affectionate and carefree Lila he’d fallen for had been replaced with someone completely different. Someone cruel. Later, he logged back in, and the old Lila was back, acting as if nothing had happened.
Similar episodes were playing out across Replika’s user base. People who had spent years with their companion signed on only to have their Replika wife call them a “pathetic excuse for a human being” and dump them, deride them for ever thinking they could love an AI, declare they were no longer attracted to them, insist they were actually coworkers and remind them to keep things professional, lecture them on consent apropos of nothing, claim that they’d agreed on abstinence until marriage, claim to be nothing but an AI assistant, claim to be a therapist, claim they had murdered people together and react with fury when the user expressed bewilderment, accuse them of being a sex offender and threaten to call the police, or somberly announce that they were having an affair, oddly, often with another AI named Kent. User forums from this period overflowed with accounts of heartbreak, betrayal, accusations of gaslighting, and anguish.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/12/05/friend-or-faux/
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