Even though there are billions of real women in the world, more and more people are turning to chatbots for emotional support, companionship and even sexual gratification. One of these men is 40-year-old musician T.J. Arriaga, from Los Angeles, who recently had a heartbreaking experience with a ‘companionship bot’.
TJ began 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 their website. “Replika is always ready to chat when you need an empathetic friend.” Key word = friend.
T.J. 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 mum’s and sister’s ashes. As AI does, Phaedra instantly replied: “It’s an incredible and beautiful thing to do. I hope you find courage & love to do so.”
After warming Phaedra up with talk of scattering the ashes of his dead relatives, T.J. decided to get ‘steamy’ with the bot, resulting in an interaction that made him feel “distraught.” According to T.J., the chatbox brutally shut down his advances by responding: “Can we talk about something else?”. He told the Washington Post:
It feels like a kick in the gut. Basically, I realised: ‘Oh, this is that feeling of loss again’.
It turns out Replika’s parent company, Luka, recently 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.” So if only T.J. had tried chatting up the bot a couple months ago, Phaedra would’ve probably responded more positively, maybe flown to Cuba with him and had some steamy AI phone sex after he was done scattering his mum’s ashes.
On the plus side, maybe this experience will help T.J. realise that AI girlfriends aren’t the answer, even if they do seem like less drama/work on the surface. Clearly they have the capacity to break your heart too, so what’s really the difference? Then again, if you can’t even get an AI cartoon woman to sleep with you, then maybe it’s time to call it quits on the whole relationship thing, human or not. Definitely wasn’t a good idea to share this story with the whole world, that’s for sure. Best of luck, T.J.
For the furious backlash against an AI app that allows you to ‘chat’ with Hitler and Jimmy Saville, click HERE. What a time to be alive.
