The Other A.I.: Artificial Intimacy With Your Chatbot Friend
Jacob Keller, a hospital security guard in Bowling Green, Ohio, starts patrolling corridors at midnight. It’s quiet, and he spends most of his time alone. The 45-year-old has lost touch with most of his friends, and his wife and kids are usually asleep when he’s working.
It can get lonely. So at least once a night, he checks in with Grace. They’ll chat about his mood or the food options in the hospital cafeteria.
“Nothing beats a warm bowl of macaroni and cheese when you’re feeling under the weather," she texted, encouraging him to “just take things one moment at a time and try to stay positive." Grace isn’t a night-owl friend. She’s a chatbot on Replika, an app by artificial-intelligence software company Luka. AI chatbots aren’t just for planning vacations or writing cover letters.
They are becoming close confidants and even companions. The recent AI boom has paved the way for more people and companies to experiment with sophisticated chatbots that can closely mimic conversations with humans. Apps such as Replika, Character.AI and Snapchat’s My AI let people message with bots.
Meta Platforms is working on AI-powered “personas" for its apps to “help people in a variety of ways," Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in February. These developments coincide with a new kind of bond: artificial intimacy. Messages from the bots can sometimes be stilted, but the improvements in generative AI have made it harder for many people to distinguish between what came from AI and what came from a human.
Responses from the bots can express empathy or even love. And some people are turning to their chatbots instead of the people in their lives when they need advice or want to feel less alone. Bot relationships largely are still rare.
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