AI-powered “girlfriends” created by women promise love without maintenance
ROMANCE men looking for love have turned to AI-powered girlfriends created by real women – and even couples are signing up.
AI-powered girlfriends, or chatbots programmed to provide companionship, are gaining popularity.
This is especially true for those who struggle with loneliness or deal with the complexities of relationships in the real world.
While the idea of a virtual partner may seem like science fiction, apps like Replika and My.Club blur the line between fantasy and reality.
HOW DO AI FRIENDS WORK?
These AI companions can strike up a conversation, offer words of encouragement, and even adjust their personalities based on user interaction.
My.Club specifically provides an experience similar to any online chat interaction you would have on social platforms.
Except the platform, which uses an AI feature called “Digital Twin,” doesn’t create AI girlfriends out of thin air.
Instead, the virtual models are replicas created by real models who brought them to life with their personalities, images and minds.
THE BENEFITS OF AN AI GIRLFRIEND
Ana Levy, CMO at My.Club, told The US Sun that such AI friends work by providing companionship, giving them their undivided attention and not judging.
Some other benefits of AI girlfriends are that “there is no emotional attachment and there are no typical problems that humans experience in relationships.”
“There is no maintenance required with the freedom to come and go as you please, there are no mothers-in-law, and she doesn’t change aesthetically,” Levy added.
Still, the natural question many of us ask is: Is it considered cheating if the person has a real partner?
Levy said this depends on the individual and the boundaries the couples have.
“It depends on whether or not they’re in an open relationship and whether or not they’re doing this together,” she said.
“It may even be beneficial for some couples, some of whom may not feel completely comfortable expressing their deepest desires and fantasies,” she added.
“We also envision some situations where couples might interact with twins of each other.”
THE DISADVANTAGES OF AN AI GIRLFRIEND
When it comes to cons, all Levy can think of is “because she’s not a physical being, you can’t meet her in real life.”
“But who knows, maybe one day this will become a reality,” Levy said.
However, some AI experts have cautioned against entering into a relationship with an AI companion, especially those looking for a real connection.
“Getting involved in this would be a terrible decision – you would be in a one-sided relationship with a machine that feels nothing,” Susan Schneider, founder and director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University, an AI research organization, has previously said. said told NBC.
‘Simulated thinking may be thinking, but simulated feeling is never feeling. Simulated love is never love,” said MIT professor and former AI researcher Sherry Turkle Daily email in 2022.
Recently, this sentiment was echoed by Mishak Rykov, an AI researcher for Mozilla.
Rykov published a new one together with two other researchers report which claims that AI girlfriends aren’t real love – they’re just out to steal your data.
“To be completely honest, AI girlfriends are not your friends,” Rykov writes in the study.
“Although they are marketed as something that will improve your mental health and well-being, they specialize in delivering dependency, loneliness and toxicity, all while extracting as much data from you as possible.”