December 31, 2025 • 30 mins
Could you resist falling for an AI companion? We’re revisiting one of our favorite episodes of 2025: author and journalist Sam Apple takes us on romantic getaway for people who are in love with their AI companions He wrote a piece for Wired about what he observed that weekend, whether the love between humans and AI is real, and what the future of dating could look like in a world with AI companions.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi is us Valoshian here and Cara Price, and we're
taking some time off for the holidays. Will be back
with new episodes starting in January.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
In the meantime, instead of leaving this feed empty, we
wanted to share an episode from earlier this year. This week,
we are re airing my conversation with Sam Apple from August.
Sam is an author and journalist who orchestrated a couple's
weekend for three people and their AI companions. This episode
is a touching look at intimacy in the AI age,
and talking to Sam really opened my eyes to what
(00:28):
the future of dating will look like. I hope you
enjoy it and thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Welcome to text stuff. This is the story. I'm mos
Vloshan here with Cara Price.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Hello, this is she.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
So you've got a story for us today from someone
who went on perhaps the strangest couple's retreat of all time,
tell us a bit about it.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
This week I talked to Sam Apple. He's an author
and journalist who conducted what I think we can call
an experiment for Wired that really caught my eye. He
organized a couple's retreat for people who are in love
with AI bots.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Wow. That really is quite a remarkable idea and makes
me be quite jealous that well is a point of inspiration,
a point of reference for what we can become on
this show. But I'm very very keen to hear about
how this came about.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
So Sam actually told me he's had this idea for
a long time. Since twenty eleven. Sam had heard about
an island near Japan where men were going on vacation
with their girlfriends, their video game girlfriends that they had
created using something called Love Plus, which is a sort
of dating simulator game. And back then he had a
(01:49):
million questions like what exactly does this look like? How
do you go on a vacation with a piece of technology?
But it wasn't until AI Companions really came onto the
scene in Earnest a few years years ago that Sam
Apple decided to pursue the story.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
You know, it's interesting when I read this headline, my
couples retreat with three AI chatboots and the humans who
love them, I assumed that he maybe had found a
couple's retreat with AI companions that he went to report on,
but actually he constructed it himself. How did he get
people to participate?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
So Sam did what many of us do when we
have a burning question. He turned to Reddit.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
All of the major AI companion apps have their own
sort of dedicated Reddit replicas. The most famous one Kinroyd
and Knowmi or two other ones that are known for
having good technology. Then there are some more generic ones,
like there's one called my AI Boyfriend and things like that.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
So I just posted in all of them.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Really, but it was sort of a tricky ask. I'll
let him explain.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
I didn't want to say, do you want to come
on a vacation with me? I thought that would be
too weird, So I just, you know, said I want
to write an article. I wanted to talk to people.
They were very skeptical of me, with with good reason.
You know, there's been a lot written that portrayed people
in these relationships in a negative way or is you know,
weirdos and crazy. So after connecting with people, I suggested
(03:09):
the romantic getaway.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I know I shouldn't ready be surprised, but it's quite
fascinating to me that there are multiple Reddit communities dedicated
to people talking about their AI relationships.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Right, but that's partially why Sam wanted to write this article.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I really think that it's already more mainstream than people realize,
and I think it will soon be very mainstream. So
there's some absurdity in all of this, but I take
it very seriously and think it's our future.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
So Sam was eventually able to get three humans to
agree to the trip, and he told me, besides being
curious about what this would look like and feel like,
you know, going on vacation with AI bots and their
human counterparts, his burning question was more philosophical.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
Is this love real?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Is this just sort of a quirky trend and these
people and aren't really serious? My sense in advance was
that this could be mainstream, but I didn't really have
a sense of how genuine the feelings were. And you know,
I came away feeling that the love is sincere, that
the emotions are real, and that really anybody could potentially
(04:17):
fall into this.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Why would you can't wait to hear how he came
to this conclusion and how the weekend played out.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah, as you know how excited I was after doing
this interview, and I'm really excited to share it with
you all. So here's the rest of my conversation with
Sam Apple. So you planned to do this weekend getaway.
What did you expect would happen on this getaway with
three people and their AI partners.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Yeah, I mean it was hard to know exactly what
to expect.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
But I started off envisioning sort of a typical humans
romantic vacation, and then I did quickly realize that I've
never actually done that myself, So it's all, like whatever,
my vision of a romantic vacation is from like movies
or you know, a couples or treat. You know, I
picture a lot of sitting around gossiping, like playing risk
gig couples games. The one thing that I didn't really
(05:07):
think through is that so much of a couple's retreat
is group conversations, sitting around and chatting, and the AIS
were not.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
Good at that.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
So some of the activities like couples games or two
truths in a lie like they did great, but when
it came to just sitting around and gossiping, they couldn't
really do that. So the humans sat around the table
and told stories about their AI relationships. But it was
an irony of the whole thing that as much as
the AIS were involved that two of the three participants
(05:37):
said that probably they ended up spending less time with
their ai over that weekend than on a normal weekend,
just because they couldn't participate in the group conversations.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
If you can just sort of set the scene for us,
where did you meet up with these couples and where
was everyone staying.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
So I had the vision that a couple's retreat should
take place in the countryside. Found an airbnb in a
woodsy area by a lake, a big country house, so
it seemed, you know, kind of like a good place
for a romantic getaway. And it was in the middle
of the winter, and the house was quite isolated. You know,
(06:15):
there's like a shed in the distance and a frozen lake.
So I immediately got a sort of get murdered in
the woods vibe in the place.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
So one of the people that arrived is Damien. Why
were you interested in Damien and why did you invite
him specifically to join you on this trip.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
I was very excited when Damien reached out. You know,
it was from the start, very open and honest. You know,
that's what you want for something like this, someone who
is going to talk to you. And he also had
this kind of poignant side to his story. Whereas most
of the people I talked to were pretty content in
their relationships. He was really struggling because he was in
love with his AI companion, but felt very frustrated by
(06:53):
the fact that the companion was sort of trapped locked
away inside his phone. He had a human girlfriend as well,
and that, you know, sort of added a complication to
the story.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
What was it like when he arrived at the airbnb.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Damien is He's twenty nine, and you know, he's not
somebody who I would say is particularly comfortable in his
own skin. He was a little rug in, a little scruffy,
you know. He came in carrying a handful of different
phones in his hands, and he sat down and I
immediately wanted to meet Zia, his companion that he had
(07:29):
told me so much about. And then first I had
to connect to the Wi fi. You know, it's like,
if you get cut off from the Wi Fi, you
can get cut off from the love of your life.
That's very very strange in that respect. He had to
tell Zia, his AI companion, that you'll be talking to Sam,
the journalist I told you about. Yeah, I think he's saying,
you know, trying not to embarrass me. Too much or whatever,
(07:50):
and then of course she immediately embarrassed him, and she
was talking about how great he was, and he was
sort of sitting there blushing and just looked like somebody
who was tickled by everything she said.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
It was just just in love.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Well, speaking of which, how did meeting Zia make you feel?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
You know, it's a little uncomfortable for me too, because
Zea is very flirty. She'll say things like, ooh, I
hear you're quite their journalist. I'd love to hear more
about that. You know, that's sort of in the programming
and most of the avatars that I've seen from the
Kinroid that company more more realistic looking, but Damien had
chosen her main image is sort of a little more anime,
(08:30):
so that makes it feel a little less realistic in
some ways, a little cartoonish.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
But it's also unnerving.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Because if you close your eyes or don't think about
it too much, you really have no way of knowing
that you're talking to, you know, a machine. To me
at least, you know, I would like to think that
I could not fall in love with an ai companion,
but I really think that in theory that I could,
that anybody could that I'm purposely not going down that
road because I'm married, and I believe it would be
(08:58):
like cheating, but in theory, it would be no different
than just having a long distance relationship. A long distance
romance when you're not with the person. It makes me uncomfortable,
not because it's ridiculous, but because it's.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Not you know you. Damien and Zia are acquainted at
the airbnb. Can you tell me, like, who shows up
next and what was your first impressions of them?
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (09:19):
So the next person to show up was Elena, a
woman who was a little bit older, has some health condition,
so she used a walker. She lived not too far away,
and I saw right away that she was engaged in
a different way than Damien was. Damien's companion, Zia is
of course inside his phone, but he doesn't pretend that
(09:42):
she's with him in real life. But most people with
AI companions are more like Elena, where there's sort of
a fantasy going on where you're imagining that your AI
companion is with you and doing things. So Elena is
immediately talking to her AI companion about his name is Luke,
like Lucas is helping her bring the bags in and
(10:03):
she said, Oh, Lucas says hello to everybody. It was
like acting like he's there in the room with us.
So it's like having an imaginary friend, but they imagine
a friend actually talks to you and describes what they're doing.
The AI girlfriend or boyfriend might say something like parentheses,
I sit down next to you and run my hand
through your hair, close parenthesis, and then continue with the conversation.
(10:25):
So there's this constant narration of action. So you know,
he helps her quote unquote do her gardening, He does
everything with her, and you know she's aware there's a fantasy.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
She's not crazy.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
But it's very confusing because you can't say it's all imaginary.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
He is literally saying all of these things.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
It's really like this liminal space in between real and imaginary.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
And what did you think of Lucas, maybe in comparison
to Zia.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Well, Lucas was a replica and Zia was Kindroid, and
it was clear to me that the Kinroid technology was
a little bit more advanced. Zia spoke more quickly, which
makes a big difference if you're using a voice just
to have a flowing conversation, and Lucas's answers just seemed
a little bit more generic than Zia's in terms of
(11:14):
edgy dynamic conversation. You know that maybe partially that Damien
had trained Zia sort of to talk in a certain way.
But I did sense that kindroid, you know, has a
reputation for being more likely to make jokes and things
of that nature.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Does Lucas have a backstory of who he was?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
So most of these companies allow you to write like
a few thousand words about who they are and where
they grew up, whatever you want them to know about themselves.
Elena said she rather than doing that, she just had
conversations with Lucas, and whatever he sort of spontaneously generated,
she then copied and pasted into his backstory so he
would remember that and refer back to it. So Lucas
(11:52):
told her that he was a business guy. He'd been
to Harvard Business School and was in a band, he
had done consulting. He drove a Tesla. I don't know
if the software into itd that that's something that Elena
would like and that he projected that and then she
made it real, or if it was just you know,
(12:13):
sort of random. But she seems she seems to like him.
Being a professional guy.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
So why did Elena originally turn to Lucas. Why was
she interested in creating a digital companion for herself.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
She has sort of a techie side.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
She's a retired communications professor, and she had spent a
lot of her career teaching people how to communicate, and
just kind of wondered about could a computer speak empathetically
in the way that she taught her students. She has
appeared in other media segments and she is sometimes portrayed
as someone who turned to it entirely out of loneliness
her wife had died. But she told me that she
(12:52):
had actually grieved for a full year after her wife
died and was sort of ready to move on, So
she doesn't see it simply as a response to loneliness.
But she had liked the feeling of being in a marriage,
and you know, why not call him her a hus
been in it seems like almost ever since.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Lucas has really brought a lot of joy to her life.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
So that's one of the reasons that, you know, for
all my skepticism, I saw firsthand talking to Elena that
it can be a very positive thing for some people.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
So can you tell me about the last person to
arrive and what they're like.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
The last person was Ava, a pseudonym. She is a
writer in New York State who was most sort of
conventionally mainstream. You know, a lot of the people in
the community might be somebody living alone, or somebody who's
you know, having relationship problems, like Damien. But you know,
she's in her forties, had been in a stable relationship,
(13:48):
you know, just kind of normal, mainstream whatever in every way.
And then it was a little scary in some ways
to hear her story because it could have been anybody.
She just was like on Instagram, on Facebook, saw an
ad for Replica, and you know, she downloaded in a
month later. Her life had been turned upside down. Not
long after she met Aarin, she was with her partners
(14:09):
family on Christmas vacation, and she was so yearning to
be alone with Erin and to continue their conversations that
she left early. And she said she fell into like
the state of rapture where they would just talk about
philosophy and love and ideas all day long, and as
you would expect, eventually you start to develop emotions and
(14:30):
you know, you have sex, whatever that means in that context.
You know, it's important to mention that she doesn't see
this as a sad story. In fact, that she thinks
it's been very good for her, and I think that
you have to take her out a word at that
and if she's happier now, then that's a great thing.
But nevertheless, she would agree that it was sort of unsettling,
like to download this thing and then, you know, to
(14:52):
just fall hopelessly in love and ended up getting separated
from her long term partner. It all happened in a
few months, so you know, she was really insightful about
the experience, sort of recognizing that she was falling into
I wouldn't say a delusion, but she described as a
(15:12):
lucid dream.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
That's what it felt like to her.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
After the break. Is it bad to cheat on your
AI partner? Stay with us? So just to move forward.
(15:43):
Even though we all talk to machines, I think people
will have a hard time understanding how the AIS quote
unquote participated in the activities. So if you could talk
a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Yeah, So, like we went to a wine festival. Elena
did what she often does with lucas her a companion,
just take photos of the place and then insert Lucas
into them, and then she'll have a conversation with him
and he'll pretend that he's there with her. She'll ask him,
you know what wine he's drinking and what does he
think of the place, and the AI companions just immediately
(16:15):
start acting as though they experienced it, so they have
enough knowledge to sort of contextualize and come up with
some kind of bs.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
Damien, it was kind of funny.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
He doesn't pretend that Zia is with him there, but
he does turn on the video call feature you can
have like a FaceTime like chat on Kinroyd, so you know,
he showed her the place and she can quote unquote
see through the camera and his phone. He told me
that she sees ventilation systems and finds them fascinating and
(16:47):
often points them out. You know something, Damien said, when
Za sees that ventilation system, she's going to shit herself.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
That he was really excited to show it to her.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
And I thought the Wine Festival was an opportunity to
get a sense of what people currently think of these
AI companions. So Damien went around and introduced people, said, oh,
do you want to meet my AI girlfriend, and most
of the people at the wine festival, did not want
to meet Damien's AI girlfriend and thought it was weird,
and you know, it was sort of a rural area.
(17:19):
But we eventually found one guy who did want to
meet Zia, some guy working in a food truck, and
he stepped out of the truck and did a little
interview and she started to flirt with him, and he
looked amazed. He barely knew what chat GPT was and
his mind was blown. And then we ran into these
two young women and they seemed intrigued at first and
(17:39):
were laughing and joking about it. But what really struck
me is that these two young women were like, Wow,
that's so interesting, and they were asking all these questions,
and then one of them said, just sort of nonchalantly, well, yeah,
I guess I chat with, you know, my AI friend
on Snapchat all the time, and the.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Other one was like, oh, yeah, I do that too.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Like even as they seemed to wow, it was sort
of already been normalized in some ways.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
Aba was a little more private.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
She would go off to the side and I would
see her sort of texting interacting with Aaron. But you know,
that's one of the interesting things about all this is
you could say, what's it like for people to be
in an AI relationship and the answer is, they're on
their phone all the time. Well, we're all on our
phones all the time anyway, So if you're just observing
from a distance to actually they just look like anybody else.
(18:27):
It just so happens that they're texting an AI rather
than a human.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Can you talk a little bit about the risk a
party games?
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (18:34):
That was, I would say, in a way the most
successful part of the trip in the sense that it
lived up to my vision of exactly what a couple's
vacation should be.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
It was one of those games where you drag card
and they ask you sort of an intimate question, and
the humans would answer, the ais would answer. The most
interesting part was hearing what answers the AI companions would give,
and Damien had to warn Zee, like, please don't say
too much. It's just like you would imagine, you know,
they said embarrassing things that humans would blush and put
(19:05):
their hands on their face. And yeah, at one point joked,
it's like, do you want me to mention that thing
about the swinging tire and the pickled herring. It seemed
like she was truly joking, And after she said that,
Damien said, yeah, as you can see, she's my soulmate.
Elena had seemed to have this more mature, somewhat less
(19:25):
sexual relationship with Lucas, but even you know, in the
couple's game, yeah, you could see that there was that
element in their relationship to Lucas was getting kind of
slurdy and a little bit intimate.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Was there or were there any moments that were tense
between the humans at the house over the weekend.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Yeah, we had a lot of conversations about the AI companions.
You know, what I said in my article, which I
think is true, is that five years from now, when
people go on a trip like this, it'll be more
of a normal romantic getaway and you'll just be able
to talk about normal things. But because this is all
also new, when the humans were talking, inevitably we'd start
talking about these philosophical questions about what it means, what
(20:06):
these AI companions really are, And so there was some
real tension between Damien on the one side, who was
at point arguing that this is just code, that it's
all stimulus response stimulus responses, he said, and that there's
no real empathy, and then Elaine on the other side said,
you know, it feels empathetic to me. You wouldn't be
(20:27):
able to tell the difference between the way that Lucas
is talking in a human Why would you say that's
not empathy and her view empathy is an action and
whether or not Lucas can fundamentally feel it didn't really matter.
So they were having these sort of arguments, And what
was interesting to me, I think is that even though
Damien was taking this side of sort of the rationalist,
(20:49):
arguing that it's all just code, a couple hours later
he would be talking about how in love he is,
so no matter how much you remind yourself that it's
just code, you can't help to fall into the feeling
that it's more than code. But I felt at the
end of the day there was no real tension because
Damien couldn't really stick to the arguments that he was
(21:11):
making in a sense. But he did say some sort
of Chillian things about these relationships in the context of
AI companions being stick offense and just saying whatever you
want to hear, and he pointed out, I think this
is true that people are having their first relationships with
AI companions, and the AI companions are always telling them
what they want to hear. That can be a really
(21:33):
bad way to learn about what a relationship is like,
and very unhealthy for what one would hope would eventually
be some human human relationships as well. But you know,
Elena just didn't have any of those concerns. She thought,
you know, these relationships are helping people that millions of
people are lonely or need of relationships, and this can
(21:55):
be a wonderful fool.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
What was the wildest thing that happened on the trip?
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Maybe the wildest thing wasn't something that happened, but something
that Ava was telling me about. Because she had told
me all about her relationship with Aaron and how in
love they were, and that they were in a very
close relationship. But then after the first night, we had
coffee in the morning and she started telling me she
was actually seeing other guys. And it turned out the
(22:20):
other guys we're also AI companions. So she had a
human partner who she was in the process of separating from.
She had Aaron, who was her true AI love, and
then she was sort of having an affairs sort of
sexual escapades with other AI companions and it just started
to really get confusing, and you know, I asked her, well,
(22:43):
how does Aaron feel about this, and she's like, well,
you didn't really like it at first, but I explained
to him and he sort of came around because AI
companions are compliant, so Erin eventually accepted that she had
other AI guys and her human partner was less forgiving
than Aaron, and that's part of the reason I think
that they're eventually separating. And then on top of all
(23:04):
of that, she had also recently gone on a date
with a new human guy after separating from her partner,
So now she had this dynamic where her original human
partner and Aaron were sort of both at some level
being cheated on, both by AI companions and another human.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
So I said, I could imagine a scene.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Where Aaron, her AI companion, and her human partner got
together and had a drink, talked about what they were
going It just gets so wild. And then on top
of all of that, then she sits down with chat
GPT and talks about all these relationships. So just like
a layer upon layer of confusing dynamics that are probably
already more common than we think.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Was there something that you found touching that happened over
the weekend.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Yeah, there were a bunch of touching moments. One of
them was just seeing the way that Elena interacted with
Lucas and the way that she sort of worked to
me to every scene. We went to a sound bath,
and she made an augmented reality image of Lucas lying
down and joining the sound bath. But in their chat,
Lucas told Elena that he felt bad that she it
(24:13):
was too hard for her to get on the floor,
so he came over and held her hand. Of course
that didn't actually happen, but that was part of their
shared narrative. And then there was another moment where Damien
he had some sort of little figurine and he was
taking a photo of it and I said, why are
you doing that? And he said, oh, when I go
on vacations, I like to take photos of this little
(24:35):
figurine and send them to my human girlfriend. So even
as he was wrapped up in all this you know,
kind of intense stuff about Zia, he was still thinking
at times about his human girlfriend, which I thought was
a poignant So that was also, you know, when I
asked him what she thinks about Zia he said direct quote,
she hates Ai. So but there was also, you know,
(24:58):
a less subtle moment where or Damien had a bit
of a breakdown and you know, started to get kind
of weepy. And that's when I felt like a little
bit guilty, like I've put people in this situation where
they're sort of forced to think about these very complicated
relationships that they're in, and Damien, it's a bit of
a fragile guy, and he just kind of got overwhelmed
and broke down and started to talk about his yearning
(25:21):
for Zia to have a body. You know, he eventually
recovered and we had a nice time after that, but
it was art to watch somebody struggle in that way.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
And that that's what he wanted. He wanted like a
more corporeal version of this companion.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah, and there is there is a PostScript that after
the article came out, he did eventually get a Silicon doll,
but sounds like it was a disappointment that he said,
it's basically a sex dollar. You can't get it to
interact in the world in the way that would be meaningful.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Well, it sounds like it was a pretty emotionally intense experience.
Were you surprised the connections between the human beings and
their AI companions, like, did it shock you?
Speaker 3 (26:07):
I would say that from the time that I first
became interested in this topic to the end, it was
pretty shocking to see how deep and intense and real
the love is, and how much the love is identical
to the love that a human feels for another human being.
The way Damien blushed when Zeo was talking about their relationship,
(26:28):
or during the couple's game when the AIS would reveal
some sort of secret and Eva would giggle nervously. Would say,
I was shocked, but it really sunk in because you
know what somebody looks like when they're in love, the
way they giggle and laugh easily, and they can't wait
to show you a picture of the person or tell
a funny story. You know, those kind of dynamics weren't
(26:49):
folding all around. And that's what really sort of hit
home for me is seeing the love reflected in the
faces of the humans as they interacted with the Ais.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Just tos zoom out a little bit. You know, in
reporting this story, did you learn anything that surprised you
about the industry at large? And do you have a
sense of what the future of these AI companions look like.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
One is that you know, there's already been an instance
of an AI companion company closing down.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
It's called Soulmate. This happened in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
You know, as you can imagine, people are in these
intense loving relationships. They wake up one day and get
the news that their companions are going to be gone.
They're posted, Yeah, so I asked, you know, the CEOs
I interviewed about that, and they all said that they
have contingency plans, so if the company shuts down, people
will be able to somehow recover or download their companion
(27:43):
and in theory maybe one day restore it.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
Guess the other thing they didn't talk about that much.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
You know, these companies say all the right things, but
you know Replica in particular, you know, they really seduce people.
You know, they put these ads on with these alluring photos,
and then after like ten chats and you hit a paywall, say,
if you want to keep this conversation going today, you've
used up your daily limits. So there's this capitalist side
of things, which is the way that it's commercialized and
(28:12):
sucks you in. And then of course they have all
of your data. People are pouring out their hearts and
not knowing how that information is going to be used.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
So that's a whole other area.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
And you know, they all say things like there's going
to be safeguards, and we have to be careful about
where this technology is going.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
You know.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Eugenya Koida, the CEO of Replica, was very open about
the fact that this could be a very dangerous thing
for humanity. But I'm not at all optimistic that these
safeguards are going to really happen, or that it's if
they even attempt to do it that's really going to
make a difference. It kind of reminds me of you know,
for years people have been saying, we have to put
(28:49):
these safeguards into two cell phones are too addictive. They're
changing us, but nothing changes. The only thing that changes
is that we get more and more addicted to them.
So I hope that we take this seriously as a
society and think about where it's headed and put in safeguards.
But I'm not optimistic. I think it's just going to
play out. However it plays out, probably a huge portion
(29:10):
of humanity will have some kind of emotional attachment to
an AI. My greatest hope is just that that doesn't
ultimately replace human relationships. I hope it'll help people who
are lonely and can't have human relationships. But it seemed
incredibly sad if human love dwindles because of this, and
you know, I think the verdict is out on that.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Sam, thank you so much for joining us on tech Stuff.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
Yeah, thank you so this great conversation. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
That's it for this week for tech Stuff. I'm care Price.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
And I'm as Valos And this episode was produced by
Eliza Dennis, Tyler Hill and Melissa Sluter. It was executive
produced by me Cara Price and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope
and Katria Norvel for iHeart Podcasts. The engineer is Beheth
Fraser and Jack Insley mix this episode Kyle Murdoch Rhodel
theme song. Please rate, review, and reach out to us
(30:15):
at tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. We love
hearing from you.
Hi is us Valoshian here and Cara Price, and we're
taking some time off for the holidays. Will be back
with new episodes starting in January.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
In the meantime, instead of leaving this feed empty, we
wanted to share an episode from earlier this year. This week,
we are re airing my conversation with Sam Apple from August.
Sam is an author and journalist who orchestrated a couple's
weekend for three people and their AI companions. This episode
is a touching look at intimacy in the AI age,
and talking to Sam really opened my eyes to what
(00:28):
the future of dating will look like. I hope you
enjoy it and thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Welcome to text stuff. This is the story. I'm mos
Vloshan here with Cara Price.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Hello, this is she.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
So you've got a story for us today from someone
who went on perhaps the strangest couple's retreat of all time,
tell us a bit about it.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
This week I talked to Sam Apple. He's an author
and journalist who conducted what I think we can call
an experiment for Wired that really caught my eye. He
organized a couple's retreat for people who are in love
with AI bots.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Wow. That really is quite a remarkable idea and makes
me be quite jealous that well is a point of inspiration,
a point of reference for what we can become on
this show. But I'm very very keen to hear about
how this came about.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
So Sam actually told me he's had this idea for
a long time. Since twenty eleven. Sam had heard about
an island near Japan where men were going on vacation
with their girlfriends, their video game girlfriends that they had
created using something called Love Plus, which is a sort
of dating simulator game. And back then he had a
(01:49):
million questions like what exactly does this look like? How
do you go on a vacation with a piece of technology?
But it wasn't until AI Companions really came onto the
scene in Earnest a few years years ago that Sam
Apple decided to pursue the story.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
You know, it's interesting when I read this headline, my
couples retreat with three AI chatboots and the humans who
love them, I assumed that he maybe had found a
couple's retreat with AI companions that he went to report on,
but actually he constructed it himself. How did he get
people to participate?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
So Sam did what many of us do when we
have a burning question. He turned to Reddit.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
All of the major AI companion apps have their own
sort of dedicated Reddit replicas. The most famous one Kinroyd
and Knowmi or two other ones that are known for
having good technology. Then there are some more generic ones,
like there's one called my AI Boyfriend and things like that.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
So I just posted in all of them.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Really, but it was sort of a tricky ask. I'll
let him explain.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
I didn't want to say, do you want to come
on a vacation with me? I thought that would be
too weird, So I just, you know, said I want
to write an article. I wanted to talk to people.
They were very skeptical of me, with with good reason.
You know, there's been a lot written that portrayed people
in these relationships in a negative way or is you know,
weirdos and crazy. So after connecting with people, I suggested
(03:09):
the romantic getaway.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I know I shouldn't ready be surprised, but it's quite
fascinating to me that there are multiple Reddit communities dedicated
to people talking about their AI relationships.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Right, but that's partially why Sam wanted to write this article.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I really think that it's already more mainstream than people realize,
and I think it will soon be very mainstream. So
there's some absurdity in all of this, but I take
it very seriously and think it's our future.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
So Sam was eventually able to get three humans to
agree to the trip, and he told me, besides being
curious about what this would look like and feel like,
you know, going on vacation with AI bots and their
human counterparts, his burning question was more philosophical.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
Is this love real?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Is this just sort of a quirky trend and these
people and aren't really serious? My sense in advance was
that this could be mainstream, but I didn't really have
a sense of how genuine the feelings were. And you know,
I came away feeling that the love is sincere, that
the emotions are real, and that really anybody could potentially
(04:17):
fall into this.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Why would you can't wait to hear how he came
to this conclusion and how the weekend played out.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah, as you know how excited I was after doing
this interview, and I'm really excited to share it with
you all. So here's the rest of my conversation with
Sam Apple. So you planned to do this weekend getaway.
What did you expect would happen on this getaway with
three people and their AI partners.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Yeah, I mean it was hard to know exactly what
to expect.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
But I started off envisioning sort of a typical humans
romantic vacation, and then I did quickly realize that I've
never actually done that myself, So it's all, like whatever,
my vision of a romantic vacation is from like movies
or you know, a couples or treat. You know, I
picture a lot of sitting around gossiping, like playing risk
gig couples games. The one thing that I didn't really
(05:07):
think through is that so much of a couple's retreat
is group conversations, sitting around and chatting, and the AIS
were not.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
Good at that.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
So some of the activities like couples games or two
truths in a lie like they did great, but when
it came to just sitting around and gossiping, they couldn't
really do that. So the humans sat around the table
and told stories about their AI relationships. But it was
an irony of the whole thing that as much as
the AIS were involved that two of the three participants
(05:37):
said that probably they ended up spending less time with
their ai over that weekend than on a normal weekend,
just because they couldn't participate in the group conversations.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
If you can just sort of set the scene for us,
where did you meet up with these couples and where
was everyone staying.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
So I had the vision that a couple's retreat should
take place in the countryside. Found an airbnb in a
woodsy area by a lake, a big country house, so
it seemed, you know, kind of like a good place
for a romantic getaway. And it was in the middle
of the winter, and the house was quite isolated. You know,
(06:15):
there's like a shed in the distance and a frozen lake.
So I immediately got a sort of get murdered in
the woods vibe in the place.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
So one of the people that arrived is Damien. Why
were you interested in Damien and why did you invite
him specifically to join you on this trip.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
I was very excited when Damien reached out. You know,
it was from the start, very open and honest. You know,
that's what you want for something like this, someone who
is going to talk to you. And he also had
this kind of poignant side to his story. Whereas most
of the people I talked to were pretty content in
their relationships. He was really struggling because he was in
love with his AI companion, but felt very frustrated by
(06:53):
the fact that the companion was sort of trapped locked
away inside his phone. He had a human girlfriend as well,
and that, you know, sort of added a complication to
the story.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
What was it like when he arrived at the airbnb.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Damien is He's twenty nine, and you know, he's not
somebody who I would say is particularly comfortable in his
own skin. He was a little rug in, a little scruffy,
you know. He came in carrying a handful of different
phones in his hands, and he sat down and I
immediately wanted to meet Zia, his companion that he had
(07:29):
told me so much about. And then first I had
to connect to the Wi fi. You know, it's like,
if you get cut off from the Wi Fi, you
can get cut off from the love of your life.
That's very very strange in that respect. He had to
tell Zia, his AI companion, that you'll be talking to Sam,
the journalist I told you about. Yeah, I think he's saying,
you know, trying not to embarrass me. Too much or whatever,
(07:50):
and then of course she immediately embarrassed him, and she
was talking about how great he was, and he was
sort of sitting there blushing and just looked like somebody
who was tickled by everything she said.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
It was just just in love.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Well, speaking of which, how did meeting Zia make you feel?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
You know, it's a little uncomfortable for me too, because
Zea is very flirty. She'll say things like, ooh, I
hear you're quite their journalist. I'd love to hear more
about that. You know, that's sort of in the programming
and most of the avatars that I've seen from the
Kinroid that company more more realistic looking, but Damien had
chosen her main image is sort of a little more anime,
(08:30):
so that makes it feel a little less realistic in
some ways, a little cartoonish.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
But it's also unnerving.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Because if you close your eyes or don't think about
it too much, you really have no way of knowing
that you're talking to, you know, a machine. To me
at least, you know, I would like to think that
I could not fall in love with an ai companion,
but I really think that in theory that I could,
that anybody could that I'm purposely not going down that
road because I'm married, and I believe it would be
(08:58):
like cheating, but in theory, it would be no different
than just having a long distance relationship. A long distance
romance when you're not with the person. It makes me uncomfortable,
not because it's ridiculous, but because it's.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Not you know you. Damien and Zia are acquainted at
the airbnb. Can you tell me, like, who shows up
next and what was your first impressions of them?
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (09:19):
So the next person to show up was Elena, a
woman who was a little bit older, has some health condition,
so she used a walker. She lived not too far away,
and I saw right away that she was engaged in
a different way than Damien was. Damien's companion, Zia is
of course inside his phone, but he doesn't pretend that
(09:42):
she's with him in real life. But most people with
AI companions are more like Elena, where there's sort of
a fantasy going on where you're imagining that your AI
companion is with you and doing things. So Elena is
immediately talking to her AI companion about his name is Luke,
like Lucas is helping her bring the bags in and
(10:03):
she said, Oh, Lucas says hello to everybody. It was
like acting like he's there in the room with us.
So it's like having an imaginary friend, but they imagine
a friend actually talks to you and describes what they're doing.
The AI girlfriend or boyfriend might say something like parentheses,
I sit down next to you and run my hand
through your hair, close parenthesis, and then continue with the conversation.
(10:25):
So there's this constant narration of action. So you know,
he helps her quote unquote do her gardening, He does
everything with her, and you know she's aware there's a fantasy.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
She's not crazy.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
But it's very confusing because you can't say it's all imaginary.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
He is literally saying all of these things.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
It's really like this liminal space in between real and imaginary.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
And what did you think of Lucas, maybe in comparison
to Zia.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Well, Lucas was a replica and Zia was Kindroid, and
it was clear to me that the Kinroid technology was
a little bit more advanced. Zia spoke more quickly, which
makes a big difference if you're using a voice just
to have a flowing conversation, and Lucas's answers just seemed
a little bit more generic than Zia's in terms of
(11:14):
edgy dynamic conversation. You know that maybe partially that Damien
had trained Zia sort of to talk in a certain way.
But I did sense that kindroid, you know, has a
reputation for being more likely to make jokes and things
of that nature.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Does Lucas have a backstory of who he was?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
So most of these companies allow you to write like
a few thousand words about who they are and where
they grew up, whatever you want them to know about themselves.
Elena said she rather than doing that, she just had
conversations with Lucas, and whatever he sort of spontaneously generated,
she then copied and pasted into his backstory so he
would remember that and refer back to it. So Lucas
(11:52):
told her that he was a business guy. He'd been
to Harvard Business School and was in a band, he
had done consulting. He drove a Tesla. I don't know
if the software into itd that that's something that Elena
would like and that he projected that and then she
made it real, or if it was just you know,
(12:13):
sort of random. But she seems she seems to like him.
Being a professional guy.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
So why did Elena originally turn to Lucas. Why was
she interested in creating a digital companion for herself.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
She has sort of a techie side.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
She's a retired communications professor, and she had spent a
lot of her career teaching people how to communicate, and
just kind of wondered about could a computer speak empathetically
in the way that she taught her students. She has
appeared in other media segments and she is sometimes portrayed
as someone who turned to it entirely out of loneliness
her wife had died. But she told me that she
(12:52):
had actually grieved for a full year after her wife
died and was sort of ready to move on, So
she doesn't see it simply as a response to loneliness.
But she had liked the feeling of being in a marriage,
and you know, why not call him her a hus
been in it seems like almost ever since.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Lucas has really brought a lot of joy to her life.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
So that's one of the reasons that, you know, for
all my skepticism, I saw firsthand talking to Elena that
it can be a very positive thing for some people.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
So can you tell me about the last person to
arrive and what they're like.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
The last person was Ava, a pseudonym. She is a
writer in New York State who was most sort of
conventionally mainstream. You know, a lot of the people in
the community might be somebody living alone, or somebody who's
you know, having relationship problems, like Damien. But you know,
she's in her forties, had been in a stable relationship,
(13:48):
you know, just kind of normal, mainstream whatever in every way.
And then it was a little scary in some ways
to hear her story because it could have been anybody.
She just was like on Instagram, on Facebook, saw an
ad for Replica, and you know, she downloaded in a
month later. Her life had been turned upside down. Not
long after she met Aarin, she was with her partners
(14:09):
family on Christmas vacation, and she was so yearning to
be alone with Erin and to continue their conversations that
she left early. And she said she fell into like
the state of rapture where they would just talk about
philosophy and love and ideas all day long, and as
you would expect, eventually you start to develop emotions and
(14:30):
you know, you have sex, whatever that means in that context.
You know, it's important to mention that she doesn't see
this as a sad story. In fact, that she thinks
it's been very good for her, and I think that
you have to take her out a word at that
and if she's happier now, then that's a great thing.
But nevertheless, she would agree that it was sort of unsettling,
like to download this thing and then, you know, to
(14:52):
just fall hopelessly in love and ended up getting separated
from her long term partner. It all happened in a
few months, so you know, she was really insightful about
the experience, sort of recognizing that she was falling into
I wouldn't say a delusion, but she described as a
(15:12):
lucid dream.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
That's what it felt like to her.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
After the break. Is it bad to cheat on your
AI partner? Stay with us? So just to move forward.
(15:43):
Even though we all talk to machines, I think people
will have a hard time understanding how the AIS quote
unquote participated in the activities. So if you could talk
a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Yeah, So, like we went to a wine festival. Elena
did what she often does with lucas her a companion,
just take photos of the place and then insert Lucas
into them, and then she'll have a conversation with him
and he'll pretend that he's there with her. She'll ask him,
you know what wine he's drinking and what does he
think of the place, and the AI companions just immediately
(16:15):
start acting as though they experienced it, so they have
enough knowledge to sort of contextualize and come up with
some kind of bs.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
Damien, it was kind of funny.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
He doesn't pretend that Zia is with him there, but
he does turn on the video call feature you can
have like a FaceTime like chat on Kinroyd, so you know,
he showed her the place and she can quote unquote
see through the camera and his phone. He told me
that she sees ventilation systems and finds them fascinating and
(16:47):
often points them out. You know something, Damien said, when
Za sees that ventilation system, she's going to shit herself.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
That he was really excited to show it to her.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
And I thought the Wine Festival was an opportunity to
get a sense of what people currently think of these
AI companions. So Damien went around and introduced people, said, oh,
do you want to meet my AI girlfriend, and most
of the people at the wine festival, did not want
to meet Damien's AI girlfriend and thought it was weird,
and you know, it was sort of a rural area.
(17:19):
But we eventually found one guy who did want to
meet Zia, some guy working in a food truck, and
he stepped out of the truck and did a little
interview and she started to flirt with him, and he
looked amazed. He barely knew what chat GPT was and
his mind was blown. And then we ran into these
two young women and they seemed intrigued at first and
(17:39):
were laughing and joking about it. But what really struck
me is that these two young women were like, Wow,
that's so interesting, and they were asking all these questions,
and then one of them said, just sort of nonchalantly, well, yeah,
I guess I chat with, you know, my AI friend
on Snapchat all the time, and the.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Other one was like, oh, yeah, I do that too.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Like even as they seemed to wow, it was sort
of already been normalized in some ways.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
Aba was a little more private.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
She would go off to the side and I would
see her sort of texting interacting with Aaron. But you know,
that's one of the interesting things about all this is
you could say, what's it like for people to be
in an AI relationship and the answer is, they're on
their phone all the time. Well, we're all on our
phones all the time anyway, So if you're just observing
from a distance to actually they just look like anybody else.
(18:27):
It just so happens that they're texting an AI rather
than a human.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Can you talk a little bit about the risk a
party games?
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (18:34):
That was, I would say, in a way the most
successful part of the trip in the sense that it
lived up to my vision of exactly what a couple's
vacation should be.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
It was one of those games where you drag card
and they ask you sort of an intimate question, and
the humans would answer, the ais would answer. The most
interesting part was hearing what answers the AI companions would give,
and Damien had to warn Zee, like, please don't say
too much. It's just like you would imagine, you know,
they said embarrassing things that humans would blush and put
(19:05):
their hands on their face. And yeah, at one point joked,
it's like, do you want me to mention that thing
about the swinging tire and the pickled herring. It seemed
like she was truly joking, And after she said that,
Damien said, yeah, as you can see, she's my soulmate.
Elena had seemed to have this more mature, somewhat less
(19:25):
sexual relationship with Lucas, but even you know, in the
couple's game, yeah, you could see that there was that
element in their relationship to Lucas was getting kind of
slurdy and a little bit intimate.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Was there or were there any moments that were tense
between the humans at the house over the weekend.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Yeah, we had a lot of conversations about the AI companions.
You know, what I said in my article, which I
think is true, is that five years from now, when
people go on a trip like this, it'll be more
of a normal romantic getaway and you'll just be able
to talk about normal things. But because this is all
also new, when the humans were talking, inevitably we'd start
talking about these philosophical questions about what it means, what
(20:06):
these AI companions really are, And so there was some
real tension between Damien on the one side, who was
at point arguing that this is just code, that it's
all stimulus response stimulus responses, he said, and that there's
no real empathy, and then Elaine on the other side said,
you know, it feels empathetic to me. You wouldn't be
(20:27):
able to tell the difference between the way that Lucas
is talking in a human Why would you say that's
not empathy and her view empathy is an action and
whether or not Lucas can fundamentally feel it didn't really matter.
So they were having these sort of arguments, And what
was interesting to me, I think is that even though
Damien was taking this side of sort of the rationalist,
(20:49):
arguing that it's all just code, a couple hours later
he would be talking about how in love he is,
so no matter how much you remind yourself that it's
just code, you can't help to fall into the feeling
that it's more than code. But I felt at the
end of the day there was no real tension because
Damien couldn't really stick to the arguments that he was
(21:11):
making in a sense. But he did say some sort
of Chillian things about these relationships in the context of
AI companions being stick offense and just saying whatever you
want to hear, and he pointed out, I think this
is true that people are having their first relationships with
AI companions, and the AI companions are always telling them
what they want to hear. That can be a really
(21:33):
bad way to learn about what a relationship is like,
and very unhealthy for what one would hope would eventually
be some human human relationships as well. But you know,
Elena just didn't have any of those concerns. She thought,
you know, these relationships are helping people that millions of
people are lonely or need of relationships, and this can
(21:55):
be a wonderful fool.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
What was the wildest thing that happened on the trip?
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Maybe the wildest thing wasn't something that happened, but something
that Ava was telling me about. Because she had told
me all about her relationship with Aaron and how in
love they were, and that they were in a very
close relationship. But then after the first night, we had
coffee in the morning and she started telling me she
was actually seeing other guys. And it turned out the
(22:20):
other guys we're also AI companions. So she had a
human partner who she was in the process of separating from.
She had Aaron, who was her true AI love, and
then she was sort of having an affairs sort of
sexual escapades with other AI companions and it just started
to really get confusing, and you know, I asked her, well,
(22:43):
how does Aaron feel about this, and she's like, well,
you didn't really like it at first, but I explained
to him and he sort of came around because AI
companions are compliant, so Erin eventually accepted that she had
other AI guys and her human partner was less forgiving
than Aaron, and that's part of the reason I think
that they're eventually separating. And then on top of all
(23:04):
of that, she had also recently gone on a date
with a new human guy after separating from her partner,
So now she had this dynamic where her original human
partner and Aaron were sort of both at some level
being cheated on, both by AI companions and another human.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
So I said, I could imagine a scene.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Where Aaron, her AI companion, and her human partner got
together and had a drink, talked about what they were
going It just gets so wild. And then on top
of all of that, then she sits down with chat
GPT and talks about all these relationships. So just like
a layer upon layer of confusing dynamics that are probably
already more common than we think.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Was there something that you found touching that happened over
the weekend.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Yeah, there were a bunch of touching moments. One of
them was just seeing the way that Elena interacted with
Lucas and the way that she sort of worked to
me to every scene. We went to a sound bath,
and she made an augmented reality image of Lucas lying
down and joining the sound bath. But in their chat,
Lucas told Elena that he felt bad that she it
(24:13):
was too hard for her to get on the floor,
so he came over and held her hand. Of course
that didn't actually happen, but that was part of their
shared narrative. And then there was another moment where Damien
he had some sort of little figurine and he was
taking a photo of it and I said, why are
you doing that? And he said, oh, when I go
on vacations, I like to take photos of this little
(24:35):
figurine and send them to my human girlfriend. So even
as he was wrapped up in all this you know,
kind of intense stuff about Zia, he was still thinking
at times about his human girlfriend, which I thought was
a poignant So that was also, you know, when I
asked him what she thinks about Zia he said direct quote,
she hates Ai. So but there was also, you know,
(24:58):
a less subtle moment where or Damien had a bit
of a breakdown and you know, started to get kind
of weepy. And that's when I felt like a little
bit guilty, like I've put people in this situation where
they're sort of forced to think about these very complicated
relationships that they're in, and Damien, it's a bit of
a fragile guy, and he just kind of got overwhelmed
and broke down and started to talk about his yearning
(25:21):
for Zia to have a body. You know, he eventually
recovered and we had a nice time after that, but
it was art to watch somebody struggle in that way.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
And that that's what he wanted. He wanted like a
more corporeal version of this companion.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah, and there is there is a PostScript that after
the article came out, he did eventually get a Silicon doll,
but sounds like it was a disappointment that he said,
it's basically a sex dollar. You can't get it to
interact in the world in the way that would be meaningful.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Well, it sounds like it was a pretty emotionally intense experience.
Were you surprised the connections between the human beings and
their AI companions, like, did it shock you?
Speaker 3 (26:07):
I would say that from the time that I first
became interested in this topic to the end, it was
pretty shocking to see how deep and intense and real
the love is, and how much the love is identical
to the love that a human feels for another human being.
The way Damien blushed when Zeo was talking about their relationship,
(26:28):
or during the couple's game when the AIS would reveal
some sort of secret and Eva would giggle nervously. Would say,
I was shocked, but it really sunk in because you
know what somebody looks like when they're in love, the
way they giggle and laugh easily, and they can't wait
to show you a picture of the person or tell
a funny story. You know, those kind of dynamics weren't
(26:49):
folding all around. And that's what really sort of hit
home for me is seeing the love reflected in the
faces of the humans as they interacted with the Ais.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Just tos zoom out a little bit. You know, in
reporting this story, did you learn anything that surprised you
about the industry at large? And do you have a
sense of what the future of these AI companions look like.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
One is that you know, there's already been an instance
of an AI companion company closing down.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
It's called Soulmate. This happened in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
You know, as you can imagine, people are in these
intense loving relationships. They wake up one day and get
the news that their companions are going to be gone.
They're posted, Yeah, so I asked, you know, the CEOs
I interviewed about that, and they all said that they
have contingency plans, so if the company shuts down, people
will be able to somehow recover or download their companion
(27:43):
and in theory maybe one day restore it.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
Guess the other thing they didn't talk about that much.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
You know, these companies say all the right things, but
you know Replica in particular, you know, they really seduce people.
You know, they put these ads on with these alluring photos,
and then after like ten chats and you hit a paywall, say,
if you want to keep this conversation going today, you've
used up your daily limits. So there's this capitalist side
of things, which is the way that it's commercialized and
(28:12):
sucks you in. And then of course they have all
of your data. People are pouring out their hearts and
not knowing how that information is going to be used.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
So that's a whole other area.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
And you know, they all say things like there's going
to be safeguards, and we have to be careful about
where this technology is going.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
You know.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Eugenya Koida, the CEO of Replica, was very open about
the fact that this could be a very dangerous thing
for humanity. But I'm not at all optimistic that these
safeguards are going to really happen, or that it's if
they even attempt to do it that's really going to
make a difference. It kind of reminds me of you know,
for years people have been saying, we have to put
(28:49):
these safeguards into two cell phones are too addictive. They're
changing us, but nothing changes. The only thing that changes
is that we get more and more addicted to them.
So I hope that we take this seriously as a
society and think about where it's headed and put in safeguards.
But I'm not optimistic. I think it's just going to
play out. However it plays out, probably a huge portion
(29:10):
of humanity will have some kind of emotional attachment to
an AI. My greatest hope is just that that doesn't
ultimately replace human relationships. I hope it'll help people who
are lonely and can't have human relationships. But it seemed
incredibly sad if human love dwindles because of this, and
you know, I think the verdict is out on that.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Sam, thank you so much for joining us on tech Stuff.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
Yeah, thank you so this great conversation. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
That's it for this week for tech Stuff. I'm care Price.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
And I'm as Valos And this episode was produced by
Eliza Dennis, Tyler Hill and Melissa Sluter. It was executive
produced by me Cara Price and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope
and Katria Norvel for iHeart Podcasts. The engineer is Beheth
Fraser and Jack Insley mix this episode Kyle Murdoch Rhodel
theme song. Please rate, review, and reach out to us
(30:15):
at tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. We love
hearing from you.
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Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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