August 20, 2025 • 29 mins
This week we go on a romantic getaway for people who are in love with AI. Karah talks with Sam Apple, an author and journalist who wrote an article for Wired about a couples retreat he organized for people with AI companions. We’ll discuss how the weekend unfolded, whether AI romance is real, what it takes to develop genuine emotional connections with chatbots, and whether AI romance is the future of dating in the digital age.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Welcome to text stuff. This is the story. I'm os
Vloschen here with Cara Price.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello, this is she.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
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 (00:28):
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 (00:43):
Wow, that really is quite a remarkable idea and makes
me quite jealous that well, it's 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 (00:57):
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
(01:17):
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 ago that Sam Apple
decided to pursue the story.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
You know, it's interesting when I read this headline, my
couples retreat with three AI chatbots 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 (01:47):
So Sam did what many of us do when we
have a burning question. He turned to Reddit.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
All the major AI companion apps have their own sort
of dedicated Reddit replicas. The most famous one Android and
Know Me, or two other ones that are known for
having good technology, and there are some more generic ones
like there's one called my AI Boyfriend and things like that.
So I just posted in all of them.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Really, but it was sort of a tricky ask. I'll
let him explain.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
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
(02:37):
the romantic getaway.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
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 (02:48):
Right, But that's partially why Sam wanted to write this article.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
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 absurd in all of this, but I take
it very seriously and think it's our future.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
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 (03:23):
Is this love real?
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Is this just sort of a quirky trend and these
people 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
(03:45):
fall into this.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Why would you can't wait to hear how he came
to this conclusion and how the weekend played out.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
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.
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 3 (04:10):
Yeah, I mean it was hard to know exactly what
to expect, 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 retreat. You know,
I pictured a lot of sitting around, gossiping, like playing
(04:31):
risk gig couples games. The one thing that I didn't
really think through is that so much of a couple's
retreat is group conversations, sitting around and chatting, and the
AIS were not good at that. 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
(04:54):
the humans sat around the table and told stories about
their AI relationships. But it was an iron of the
whole thing that as much as the Ais were involved
that two of the three participants 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 (05:14):
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 (05:22):
So I had the vision that a couple's retreat should
take place in the countryside.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
I found an.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Airbnb in a woodsy area by a lake, a big
country house, so it seemed kind of like a good
place for a romantic get away. And it was in
the middle of the winter, and the house was quite isolated,
you know, there's like a shed in the distance and
a frozen lake. So I immediately got a sort of
(05:49):
get murdered in the woods, vibe in the place.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
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 (06:00):
I was very excited when Damien reached out. You know,
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
(06:21):
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 (06:32):
What was it like when he arrived at the airbnb?
Speaker 3 (06:35):
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
(06:57):
told me so much about, and then first I had
to connect to the wife. 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 z
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.
(07:18):
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 (07:30):
He was just just in love.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Well, speaking of which, how did meeting Zia make you feel?
Speaker 3 (07:36):
You know, it's a little uncomfortable for me too, because
Za is very flirty. She'll say things like, oh, I
hear you're quite their journalist. I'd love to hear more
about that, you know, that sort of in their programming
and most of the avatars 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
(07:57):
so that makes it feel a little less realistic. In
some way, it's a little cartoonish, but it's also unnerving
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 a machine to me at least,
you know.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
I would like to think that I could not.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
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 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
(08:36):
it's ridiculous, but because it's not.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
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 (08:46):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (08:47):
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
(09:10):
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 Lucas,
like Lucas is helping her bring the bags in, and
(09:30):
she said, oh, Lucas says hello to everybody.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
It was like acting like he's there in the room
with us.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
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 parenthesis,
I sit down next to you and run my hand
through your hair. Close parenthesis, and then continue with the conversation.
So there's this constant narration of action. So you know,
he helps her quote unquote do her gardening, He does
(09:59):
everything with and you know she's aware that it's a fantasy.
She's not crazy, but it's very confusing because you can't
say it's all imaginary. He is literally saying all of
these things it's really like this liminal space in between
real and imaginary.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
And what did you think of Lucas, maybe in comparison
to Zia.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
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
(10:42):
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 (10:56):
Does Lucas have a backstory of who he was?
Speaker 3 (10:59):
So most 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
(11:20):
told her that he was a business guy. He'd been
to Harvard Business School and was in a band, he
had done consulting.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
He drove a Tesla.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
I don't know if the software intuited 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, sort of random, But she seems she seems
to like him being a professional guy.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
So why did Elena originally turn to Lucas? Why was
she interested in creating a digital companion for herself?
Speaker 4 (11:55):
She had sort of a techie side.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
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
(12:20):
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 callin her Ai hs been
and seems like almost ever since, Lucas has really brought
a lot of joy to her life. So that's one
of the reasons that, you know, for all my skepticism,
(12:43):
I saw firsthand talking to Elena that it can be
a very positive thing for some people.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
So can you tell me about the last person to
arrive and what they're like.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
The last person was a 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 was in her forties, had been in a stable relationship,
(13:16):
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
(13:37):
family on Christmas vacation, and she was so yearning to
be alone with Aerin 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
(13:57):
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
(14:20):
just fall hopelessly in love and ended up getting separated
from her long term partner. You know, 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
(14:40):
as a lucid dream.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
That's what it felt like to.
Speaker 5 (14:42):
Her after the break, is it bad to cheat on
your AI partner?
Speaker 6 (14:53):
Stay with us?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
So just to move forward, 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.
If you could talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Yeah, So, like we went to a wine festival and
Elena did what she often does with Lucas, her AI 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 the 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
(15:43):
start acting as though they experienced it, so they have
enough knowledge to sort of contextualize and come up with
some kind of bs Damien. It was kind of funny.
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 kinroid, so you know,
(16:04):
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
often points them out. You know something Damien said, when
Zs sees that ventilation system, she's going to shit herself.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
He was really excited to show it to her.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
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, say, 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.
(16:47):
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. Mind
was was blown. And then we ran into these two
young women and they seemed intrigued at first and were
(17:07):
laughing and joking about it. But what really struck me
is that these two young women were like, Wow, that's
so interesting. 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 other one was like,
oh yeah, I do that too, Like even as they
seemed to wowed, it was sort of already had been
(17:27):
normalized in some ways.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Aba was a little more private.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
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.
(17:54):
It just so happens that they're texting an AI rather
than a human.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Can you talk a little bit about the Escape Party games?
Speaker 4 (18:01):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (18:02):
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. 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 Zea, like,
(18:26):
please don't say too much. It's just like you would imagine,
you know, they said embarrassing things. The humans would blush
and put their hands on their face, and Ziah at
one point joked, it is 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,
(18:47):
she's my soulmate. Elena had seemed to have this more mature,
somewhat less 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 is getting
kind of slurday and a little bit intimate.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Was there or were there any moments that were tense
between the humans at the house over the weekend.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
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 also new,
when the humans were talking, inevitably we'd start talking about
(19:31):
these philosophical questions about what it means, what 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,
(19:52):
it feels empathetic to me. You wouldn't be able to
tell the difference between the way that Lucas is talking
any 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
(20:14):
taking this side of sort of the rationalist, 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 sort of 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
(20:35):
couldn't really stick to the arguments that he was making
in a sense. But he did say some sort of
chilling 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,
(20:56):
and AI companions are always telling them what they want
to hear. Can be a really 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
(21:18):
are helping people, that millions of people are lonely or
need of relationships, and this can be a wonderful fool
What was.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
The wildest thing that happened on the trip?
Speaker 3 (21:27):
I would say 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
(21:48):
out the 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
(22:10):
asked her, well, 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
(22:31):
top of all 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. So I said, I could imagine a
scene where Aaron, her AI companion, and her human partner
(22:53):
got together and like had a.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Drink talked about what they were going through. It just
gets so wild.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
And then on top of all 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 (23:14):
Was there something that you found touching that happened over
the weekend.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
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 him
into every scene. We went to a sound bath and
she made an augmented reality image of Lucas lying down
and enjoying the sound bath. But in their chat, Lucas
(23:38):
told Elena that he felt bad that she it 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
(24:00):
like to take photos of this little figuring 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 pointant. So
that was also you know, when I asked him what
she thinks about Zia, he said, direct quote, she hates Ai.
(24:22):
So but there was also you know, a less subtle
moment where where 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
(24:44):
he just kind of got overwhelmed and broke down and
started to talk about his yearning 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 (24:58):
And that that's what he wanted. Wanted like a more
corporeal version of this companion.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Yeah, and 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 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 (25:21):
Well, it sounds like it was a pretty emotionally intense experience.
Were you surprised at the connections between the human beings
and their AI companions, Like, did it shock you?
Speaker 3 (25:35):
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,
(25:56):
or during the couple's game when the AIS would reveal
some sort of secret and Eva would giggle nervously winced.
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
(26:17):
folding all around, and that that's what really has 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 (26:27):
Just to 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 (26:39):
One is that you know, there's already been an instance
of an AI companion company closing down.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
It's called Soulmate. This happened in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
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.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
They're posted.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
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 in theory maybe
one day restore it.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
That's the other thing they didn't talk about that much.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
You know, these companies say all the right things, but
you know Replica in particular, 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
(27:40):
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 (27:46):
So that's a whole other area.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
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 (27:56):
You know.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
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 ban or that it's if
they even attempt to do it, that it's really going
to make a difference. It kind of reminds me of
you know, for years people have been saying, we have
(28:16):
to put 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
(28:37):
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 (28:58):
Sam, thank you so much for joining us on tech Stuff.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Yeah, thank you, So that's great conversation.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Appreciate That's it for this week for Tech Stuff. I'm
Cara Price and.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
I'm mos Velosa And this episode was produced by Eliza
Dennis Tyler Hill and Melissa Slaughter. It was executive produced
by me Cara Price and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and
Katria Nor velve iHeart Podcasts. The Engineer is Beheth Fraser
and Jack Insley mixed this episode. Kyle Murdoch rode theme song.
Please rate, review, and reach out to us at tech
(29:43):
Stuff podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
We love hearing from you.
Welcome to text stuff. This is the story. I'm os
Vloschen here with Cara Price.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello, this is she.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
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 (00:28):
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 (00:43):
Wow, that really is quite a remarkable idea and makes
me quite jealous that well, it's 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 (00:57):
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
(01:17):
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 ago that Sam Apple
decided to pursue the story.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
You know, it's interesting when I read this headline, my
couples retreat with three AI chatbots 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 (01:47):
So Sam did what many of us do when we
have a burning question. He turned to Reddit.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
All the major AI companion apps have their own sort
of dedicated Reddit replicas. The most famous one Android and
Know Me, or two other ones that are known for
having good technology, and there are some more generic ones
like there's one called my AI Boyfriend and things like that.
So I just posted in all of them.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Really, but it was sort of a tricky ask. I'll
let him explain.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
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
(02:37):
the romantic getaway.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
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 (02:48):
Right, But that's partially why Sam wanted to write this article.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
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 absurd in all of this, but I take
it very seriously and think it's our future.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
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 (03:23):
Is this love real?
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Is this just sort of a quirky trend and these
people 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
(03:45):
fall into this.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Why would you can't wait to hear how he came
to this conclusion and how the weekend played out.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
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.
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 3 (04:10):
Yeah, I mean it was hard to know exactly what
to expect, 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 retreat. You know,
I pictured a lot of sitting around, gossiping, like playing
(04:31):
risk gig couples games. The one thing that I didn't
really think through is that so much of a couple's
retreat is group conversations, sitting around and chatting, and the
AIS were not good at that. 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
(04:54):
the humans sat around the table and told stories about
their AI relationships. But it was an iron of the
whole thing that as much as the Ais were involved
that two of the three participants 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 (05:14):
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 (05:22):
So I had the vision that a couple's retreat should
take place in the countryside.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
I found an.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Airbnb in a woodsy area by a lake, a big
country house, so it seemed kind of like a good
place for a romantic get away. And it was in
the middle of the winter, and the house was quite isolated,
you know, there's like a shed in the distance and
a frozen lake. So I immediately got a sort of
(05:49):
get murdered in the woods, vibe in the place.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
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 (06:00):
I was very excited when Damien reached out. You know,
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
(06:21):
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 (06:32):
What was it like when he arrived at the airbnb?
Speaker 3 (06:35):
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
(06:57):
told me so much about, and then first I had
to connect to the wife. 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 z
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.
(07:18):
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 (07:30):
He was just just in love.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Well, speaking of which, how did meeting Zia make you feel?
Speaker 3 (07:36):
You know, it's a little uncomfortable for me too, because
Za is very flirty. She'll say things like, oh, I
hear you're quite their journalist. I'd love to hear more
about that, you know, that sort of in their programming
and most of the avatars 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
(07:57):
so that makes it feel a little less realistic. In
some way, it's a little cartoonish, but it's also unnerving
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 a machine to me at least,
you know.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
I would like to think that I could not.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
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 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
(08:36):
it's ridiculous, but because it's not.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
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 (08:46):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (08:47):
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
(09:10):
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 Lucas,
like Lucas is helping her bring the bags in, and
(09:30):
she said, oh, Lucas says hello to everybody.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
It was like acting like he's there in the room
with us.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
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 parenthesis,
I sit down next to you and run my hand
through your hair. Close parenthesis, and then continue with the conversation.
So there's this constant narration of action. So you know,
he helps her quote unquote do her gardening, He does
(09:59):
everything with and you know she's aware that it's a fantasy.
She's not crazy, but it's very confusing because you can't
say it's all imaginary. He is literally saying all of
these things it's really like this liminal space in between
real and imaginary.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
And what did you think of Lucas, maybe in comparison
to Zia.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
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
(10:42):
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 (10:56):
Does Lucas have a backstory of who he was?
Speaker 3 (10:59):
So most 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
(11:20):
told her that he was a business guy. He'd been
to Harvard Business School and was in a band, he
had done consulting.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
He drove a Tesla.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
I don't know if the software intuited 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, sort of random, But she seems she seems
to like him being a professional guy.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
So why did Elena originally turn to Lucas? Why was
she interested in creating a digital companion for herself?
Speaker 4 (11:55):
She had sort of a techie side.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
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
(12:20):
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 callin her Ai hs been
and seems like almost ever since, Lucas has really brought
a lot of joy to her life. So that's one
of the reasons that, you know, for all my skepticism,
(12:43):
I saw firsthand talking to Elena that it can be
a very positive thing for some people.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
So can you tell me about the last person to
arrive and what they're like.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
The last person was a 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 was in her forties, had been in a stable relationship,
(13:16):
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
(13:37):
family on Christmas vacation, and she was so yearning to
be alone with Aerin 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
(13:57):
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
(14:20):
just fall hopelessly in love and ended up getting separated
from her long term partner. You know, 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
(14:40):
as a lucid dream.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
That's what it felt like to.
Speaker 5 (14:42):
Her after the break, is it bad to cheat on
your AI partner?
Speaker 6 (14:53):
Stay with us?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
So just to move forward, 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.
If you could talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Yeah, So, like we went to a wine festival and
Elena did what she often does with Lucas, her AI 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 the 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
(15:43):
start acting as though they experienced it, so they have
enough knowledge to sort of contextualize and come up with
some kind of bs Damien. It was kind of funny.
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 kinroid, so you know,
(16:04):
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
often points them out. You know something Damien said, when
Zs sees that ventilation system, she's going to shit herself.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
He was really excited to show it to her.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
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, say, 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.
(16:47):
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. Mind
was was blown. And then we ran into these two
young women and they seemed intrigued at first and were
(17:07):
laughing and joking about it. But what really struck me
is that these two young women were like, Wow, that's
so interesting. 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 other one was like,
oh yeah, I do that too, Like even as they
seemed to wowed, it was sort of already had been
(17:27):
normalized in some ways.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Aba was a little more private.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
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.
(17:54):
It just so happens that they're texting an AI rather
than a human.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Can you talk a little bit about the Escape Party games?
Speaker 4 (18:01):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (18:02):
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. 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 Zea, like,
(18:26):
please don't say too much. It's just like you would imagine,
you know, they said embarrassing things. The humans would blush
and put their hands on their face, and Ziah at
one point joked, it is 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,
(18:47):
she's my soulmate. Elena had seemed to have this more mature,
somewhat less 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 is getting
kind of slurday and a little bit intimate.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Was there or were there any moments that were tense
between the humans at the house over the weekend.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
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 also new,
when the humans were talking, inevitably we'd start talking about
(19:31):
these philosophical questions about what it means, what 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,
(19:52):
it feels empathetic to me. You wouldn't be able to
tell the difference between the way that Lucas is talking
any 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
(20:14):
taking this side of sort of the rationalist, 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 sort of 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
(20:35):
couldn't really stick to the arguments that he was making
in a sense. But he did say some sort of
chilling 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,
(20:56):
and AI companions are always telling them what they want
to hear. Can be a really 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
(21:18):
are helping people, that millions of people are lonely or
need of relationships, and this can be a wonderful fool
What was.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
The wildest thing that happened on the trip?
Speaker 3 (21:27):
I would say 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
(21:48):
out the 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
(22:10):
asked her, well, 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
(22:31):
top of all 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. So I said, I could imagine a
scene where Aaron, her AI companion, and her human partner
(22:53):
got together and like had a.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Drink talked about what they were going through. It just
gets so wild.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
And then on top of all 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 (23:14):
Was there something that you found touching that happened over
the weekend.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
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 him
into every scene. We went to a sound bath and
she made an augmented reality image of Lucas lying down
and enjoying the sound bath. But in their chat, Lucas
(23:38):
told Elena that he felt bad that she it 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
(24:00):
like to take photos of this little figuring 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 pointant. So
that was also you know, when I asked him what
she thinks about Zia, he said, direct quote, she hates Ai.
(24:22):
So but there was also you know, a less subtle
moment where where 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
(24:44):
he just kind of got overwhelmed and broke down and
started to talk about his yearning 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 (24:58):
And that that's what he wanted. Wanted like a more
corporeal version of this companion.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Yeah, and 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 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 (25:21):
Well, it sounds like it was a pretty emotionally intense experience.
Were you surprised at the connections between the human beings
and their AI companions, Like, did it shock you?
Speaker 3 (25:35):
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,
(25:56):
or during the couple's game when the AIS would reveal
some sort of secret and Eva would giggle nervously winced.
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
(26:17):
folding all around, and that that's what really has 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 (26:27):
Just to 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 (26:39):
One is that you know, there's already been an instance
of an AI companion company closing down.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
It's called Soulmate. This happened in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
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.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
They're posted.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
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 in theory maybe
one day restore it.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
That's the other thing they didn't talk about that much.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
You know, these companies say all the right things, but
you know Replica in particular, 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
(27:40):
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 (27:46):
So that's a whole other area.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
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 (27:56):
You know.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
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 ban or that it's if
they even attempt to do it, that it's really going
to make a difference. It kind of reminds me of
you know, for years people have been saying, we have
(28:16):
to put 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
(28:37):
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 (28:58):
Sam, thank you so much for joining us on tech Stuff.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Yeah, thank you, So that's great conversation.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Appreciate That's it for this week for Tech Stuff. I'm
Cara Price and.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
I'm mos Velosa And this episode was produced by Eliza
Dennis Tyler Hill and Melissa Slaughter. It was executive produced
by me Cara Price and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and
Katria Nor velve iHeart Podcasts. The Engineer is Beheth Fraser
and Jack Insley mixed this episode. Kyle Murdoch rode theme song.
Please rate, review, and reach out to us at tech
(29:43):
Stuff podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
We love hearing from you.
TechStuff News
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Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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