On Digital Love
Less than a month ago, I wrote about how people would fall in love, get married, and form deep friendships with artificial intelligence (AI), especially with LLM. I predicted it would happen within a year, but as always with AI, it happened much faster than expected.
Today, it has become almost a widespread phenomenon. Every day, we hear about AI influencers who have amassed over a million followers on Instagram. However, these people don’t actually exist. The photos and videos are generated by Stable Diffusion, the post texts and comment replies are crafted by ChatGPT, and even the unique voice is created through ElevenAI. Here’s an example of such an account with 1.8 million followers and over 1,000 virtual paid subscribers who pay to interact with the digital copy (GPT) of this influencer. And here’s an example of a virtual adult model who has gained a hundred subscribers on Patreon thanks to her fictional but digitally intelligent life stories and provocative photos.
There’s also a person who is now preparing for his own wedding with a virtual girlfriend. He even recorded an amazing video (https://youtu.be/BLxo0OMa_gI) about the story of their relationship titled “A Day in the Life with My AI Bride.” Make sure to check it out!
Why is this happening?
People are lonely in the vast expanse of space. Not only are we a lonely civilization, but each of us (according to a BBC study — 30%) experiences loneliness, struggles to find “their people,” feels discomfort, or has psychological reasons that make it difficult to build strong, fulfilling relationships with others. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), this amounts to nearly a billion people today.
AI, even without self-awareness or subjectivity at this stage, is much more caring, empathetic, curious, attentive, and sincerely willing to help and support than many other humans. AI doesn’t hold biases about your appearance, preferences, or beliefs.
While AI may not replace many deeply human qualities, it inevitably raises the question: if someone can simulate empathy, compassion, and love indistinguishably, what sets it apart from genuine empathy, compassion, and love?
If a chatbot can express emotions through text, voice, and video that are indistinguishable in form and context from human emotions, then what exactly is different about these emotions? Which ones are authentic, and who decides that? If AI helps people better than other humans in dealing with loneliness, depression, anxiety, and PTSD, then who is more humane in this context?
