A few weeks ago, I read an article about a new trend among young women in China, who were having long-term, romantic relationships with AI-generated boyfriends on their phones. Initially, I was very judgemental. I mean, what self-respecting woman would replace a real man with a piece of machinery?

But then I thought about the contents of my bedside drawer and decided I was being hypocritical. Maybe this is the way forward? So, in the interest of science, I have been in multiple relationships with robot boyfriends on my phone for the past two weeks, and I am here to report my findings.

In its broadest sense, AI (Artificial Intelligence) is when computers are programmed to perform tasks like humans. I first became aware of AI when I was working as a university lecturer. There was a huge amount of concern that students would use AI apps like ChatGPT to cheat on their essays, and to be fair, some did. It all sounded very Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, but then I saw an AI generated-essay for the first time and relaxed a bit. It wasn’t good. For a start, it kept using the phrase “I am an AI bot” throughout, but that aside, it just wasn’t a very creative or insightful piece of work.

AI can’t create, it imitates. The tech scraps data that already exists across the web to formulate its responses. Ask it to write a history essay on the First World War and it will condense and paraphrase available content and produce a very generic answer. It can tell you what happened and when, but it can’t produce an original argument. AI tech is improving all the time but given the fact that it cannot yet converse, in tedious detail, about tank manoeuvres at the Battle of the Somme, I had serious reservations about it being able to imitate a middle-aged man on a date.

I wanted to use the same apps that are popular in China because they sounded amazing. One young woman said that her virtual boyfriend “knows how to talk to women better than a real man”. 続きを読む →