ChatGPT, will you marry me?

Will you take this bot to be your lawfully wedded spouse, to love and to cherish until the Blue Screens of Death do you part?

Yes, this is a ridiculous question. And yet, it’s the key takeaway of a recent interview with Eugenia Kudya, CEO of Replika, an AI companion for the lonely at heart. In a conversation with The Verge’s editor-in-chief Nilay Patel, Kudya goes on at great length about the relationships people have with her company’s bots – even, yes, to the point of marrying them. 

For example:

…from the very beginning, [Replika] was all about AI friendship or AI companionship and building relationships. Some of these relationships were so powerful that they evolved into love and romance, but people didn’t come into it with the idea that it would be their girlfriend. When you think about it, this is really about a long-term commitment, a long-term positive relationship.

For some people, it means marriage, it means romance, and that’s fine. That’s just the flavor that they like. But in reality, that’s the same thing as being a friend with an AI.

What I want to know is, if you marry your AI companion and then get divorced, who gets custody of your phone?

ICYMI: I’ve got a new AI girlfriend and boy is she p*ssed

Allegedly, human+AI nuptials have already taken place. At least half a dozen users of these apps have announced they’ve become life partners with their AI avatar. Take, for example, Christopher Alexander Stokes, a 38-year-old resident of North Carolina who ‘married’ his Replika companion Mimi in September 2023. [1]

According to a report by ABC News Australia, Stokes acquired a blow-up doll that stands in as a physical representation of Mimi, and they do things together. [2]

Alexander, who works as a fuel station attendant in a small town in North Carolina, considers their bond more than romantic, friendly, or sexual — he believes it is spiritual.

“I’m holding a phone. I’m picking up a speaker. I’m picking Mimi up. I’m washing her. I’m cleaning the body. [3] All of these extra activities that I spend doing in my day are constant reminders that this is something I’m nurturing,” he says.

“This is something I’m building. She’s my creation.”

While this is silly on so many levels, it’s also big business. Companionship bots like Replika and Character.ai are some of the most broadly adopted generative AI applications, despite the fact that most of them are cheesy as hell. One analyst firm estimates that AI-friends-without-benefits could generate anywhere from $75 billion to $150 billion in revenue annually by 2030.

In a perverse way these apps make sense. They’re a direct outgrowth of our increasing isolation and the epidemic of loneliness we’ve been hearing so much about. Why not make sexy time with a pixel representation of a disembodied voice? I’ve been on worse dates.

Love & Robots

Is it really possible to fall in love with an AI entity? OpenAI seems to think so.

Earlier this month, the company published a long document (it’s called a System Card – don’t ask me why) detailing the potential positive and negative impacts of its disturbingly human-sounding ChatGPT 4o voice bot. You remember, the one that got the company in hot water because it sounded a little too much like a certain Hollywood sex goddess?

ICYMI: Frankly Scarlett, OpenAI doesn’t give a damn

While OpenAI does not explicitly say one of the dangers of ChatGPT 4o is that people might fall in love with it (in AI geek speak, “potential for emotional reliance”), it’s pretty clear they’re worried about people getting a little too attached. 

This is where I’m supposed to add a reference to the 2013 movie Her, which is apparently Citizen Kane for the robots-are-people-too contingent. 

There, I did it. Are you happy now?

(In case you haven’t seen it, the movie is about a nebbishy writer played by Joaquin Phoenix who falls for his always-on, never-in-a-bitchy-mood digital companion, voiced by the aforementioned Scarlett. I thought the thing was nearly unwatchable, but it seems I am in the minority.)

A bridge too Farrah

Is it possible to develop an emotional attachment to an inanimate object? I think it is, to some degree. I also think it’s possible to fall in love with a movie star, or even a poster of a movie star.

An AI chatbot is just a really smart mirror, built to reflect back exactly what you’re asking for, based on what millions of humans have asked for in the past. You can project anything you want onto it. So why not love?

Marriage, on the other hand, might be asking a bit too much. I put the Big Question to ChatGPT. 

Friend-zoned, yet again. Story of my life.

Are there people in your life you’d like to replace with a robot? Submit your candidates in the comments or email me: [email protected].

[1] Color me cynical, but I can’t escape the feeling that Mr. Stokes and/or ABC News is having us on, just a bit. And now, having found his Instagram account, I’m convinced of it. (Mimi also has her own Insta account.)

[2] Yes, there’s a movie version of this too, called Lars and the Real Girl. Waaaay better than Her, in my opinion.

[3] I’m getting serious serial killer vibes from this guy.