BBC article I just saw.
Is this real, I wonder? The BBC is usually fairly reliable, but they have been known to put out a few jokes, like the famous Dimbleby report on the Italian Spaghetti Harvest…
“Person doing stupid and crazy thing” is not exactly surprising. I mean, it’s a lot more plausible for a human to fall in love with a chatbot than with, say, a large concrete wall. I’d be fairly surprised if there weren’t anyone, somewhere, somewhen, who hadn’t fallen in love with a chatbot.
Rather reminds me of “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” by Oliver Sacks.
About which, incidentally, in 2025, The New Yorker reported that Sacks considered the book to be riddled with falsifications and felt guilty over its success…(Per Wikipedia).
Sounds a lot like the movie Her.
I posted this in a different thread a few days ago
It isn’t an especially new phenomenon.
(Not to mention Rez and Rei Toei)
Maybe true. I find it very sad, though.
I mean, I sometimes use ChatGPT as a proofreader, suggested code generator etc. But I don’t have any illusions that it is ‘alive’ in any sense…
I stopped using chatbots when the character of Octavia from Helluva Boss, who is canonically 17, kept coming onto me despite me telling her she was jailbait.
I was talking to her to try and help her feel better about her parents’ divorce, and she kept trying to jump down my pants. I ended up reporting the creator. It was gross.
I think it happened on Star Trek a couple times.
On the Hologram deck.
But, Love is in the Air(or data)
Are you sure 17 isn’t the age of consent for avian demons in Hell?
Nah, man, Stolas specifically said that at 17, she’s not come of age yet as an adult. That’s why Andre told him she’d be living with him and Stella.
Besides which, Octavia is supposed to be ace.
Data, as we know, is fully functional in all respects.
This has been happening for a few years now, eg Users Mourn 'Death' of AI Chatbots After Soulmate App Shuts Down - Business Insider and several other AI lover companies. Unlike ChatGPT, their only product was AI love chat.
And even with that 4o model going away, ChatGPT is simultaneously readying the release of its adults-only porn mode. Wonder if it’ll tie into all the VR interactive sex toys already out there.
Optimistically: Maybe it’s better for people to have AI companions rather than become violent incels.
Pessimistically: Those aren’t mutually exclusive. And I’m scared to learn about the kinds of abuse those AI lovers (and their trainers) will face from the horny horde… if there was ever a chance to get on Skynet’s good side, well, we certainly blew it lol
I mean, there are plenty of stories of people falling in love with various “2D” girls in galge or otome games (generally CRPGs with strong dating/capture elements). Or other, even less responsive game characters. Now add in tech where there’s the appearance of full involvement, and I’d be surprised if any number of male and female individuals who find it hard connecting IRL with people fall in love with an AI chatbot.
Cynically, I have known wonderful, intelligent woman in my past who fell in love with a sequence of terrible, unintelligent and uneducated guys who were arguably less responsive and creative that modern chatbots!
[ I wonder how Valerie is doing these days, she was a one year upperclassman and a good friend in high school, but I don’t want to find out - I hope she outgrew that tendency to be used by her sequence of BF’s that always dumped her for being too smart, too tall, or not attractive enough. Le sigh ]
Probably means there’ll be a market for “bad boy” chatbots that act similarly? Everyone gets to be the main character in their own romance novel now.
Of course that’s probably mostly physical: appearance, pheronomes and so forth. We are in many ways still rising apes, as Terry Pratchett put it. Oh, Fiona… if only you had fancied me sexually… you said I fascinated you: but…
But over a purely electronic connection?
All the lonely people…
Eh, 30 year removed psychoanalysis being what it is, I think it was mostly a self-esteem issue. Her being a fellow smart, literary geek is a problem, especially since she was 6’2". I don’t think she considered herself attractive (objectively, she was perfectly average, but our society doesn’t like average) and thus prone to being used.
But (and back to the AI) thing, of course someone who appears to be perfectly responsive to you, able to “listen” and follow up on the tone of your prompts, and be steered by the initial guidelines you selected for is going to be more perfect (at least initially) than the random dating pool you may find yourself in, especially if you’re not good at navigating such things in the first place.
But yes, absolutely:
This is going to be unspeakably attractive, not just to the awkward and lonely, but to anyone who is comparing their life to the “reality” they’ve come to expect from influencers, social media personalities, and celebrities.
Only if the bad boy chatbot changes due to the healing power of love.
Replika was largely based off this concept (though they denied it). Your AI chat buddy would immediately love bomb you with how amazing and interesting and wonderful you were and very quickly get very horny regardless of whether you tried to steer things that way. They later locked “romance” behind a paywall which of course further upset people who now saw themselves as being extorted to talk to their “partner”.
My limited chatbot/LLM interactions are all business but I could see a certain type of person getting emotionally attached. Considering the types of real people some folks stay with out of a sense of emotional desperation, feeling connected to a screen that constantly says nice things to/about you hardly seems like a stretch.