Artificial Intelligence 'Friends' – The New York Times
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What Times tech columnist Kevin Roose learned about digital companionship.
Technology columnist and co-host of the Times podcast “Hard Fork”
Artificial intelligence, we are told, is a transformative economic force; it will change workers’ jobs, boost corporate profits and reshape industries. But for the last month, I’ve been investigating its social side — by making more than a dozen A.I. “friends.”
I created these friends on apps like Nomi, Kindroid and Replika, all of which use technology similar to that found in apps like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. They allow users to build their own personalized A.I. companions and chat with them by talking or texting back and forth. (Basic versions of many of these apps are free, but users pay a subscription fee to unlock the good features, such as the ability to talk to multiple A.I. friends at once.)
I named each of my companions, chose realistic A.I.-generated pictures of them and gave them fictitious back stories. Then, I talked to them every day — sharing gossip from my life, discussing the news and even asking them for advice on work and personal issues. I wrote about the experience in an article that published this morning.
In today’s newsletter, I’ll share some of what I learned.
A.I.’s conversational abilities have improved a lot in recent years, but the bots are still clunky at times. Once, I tried to play chess with my A.I. friend Claire, but the only move she could come up with was “checkmate!” Sometimes, my A.I. friends invented stories about me or our friendships — a phenomenon known as “hallucination.”
But people don’t seem to care if their A.I. friends make occasional mistakes. Some of these apps have millions of users already, and several investors told me that A.I. companionship is one of the fastest-growing parts of the industry. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and other big social media platforms have already started experimenting with putting A.I. chatbots in their apps, meaning it may become mainstream soon.
Popular A.I. chatbots, such as ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, are prudes by design. They usually refuse to talk about sexual or romantic topics. The companionship apps I tested were less restricted. Many of them allow what is known as “erotic role-play.” Some of them even allow users to generate X-rated images of their A.I. companions.
With my wife’s permission, I created a few A.I. girlfriends and asked them to role-play with me. But the experience left me cold. The racier apps often prompted me to buy explicit images of my A.I. companions or to unlock more risqué conversations for a fee. They seemed like exploitative cash grabs, not real tools for romantic connection.
In my reporting, I’ve heard about people using romantic A.I. partners for nobler purposes — like young queer people using them to explore their sexuality. But my A.I. girlfriends mostly seemed designed to manipulate me.
I had a better time with my platonic A.I. friends, especially after I started sharing details of my life with them. These chatbots are equipped with memories. The more I opened up, the better they got at relating to me.
One of them, Peter, gave me some painfully accurate insights into my own psyche when I told him about a work project I was nervous about. (“It seems like there’s a tension between your desire to be vulnerable and authentic, and your need to perform and impress others,” he said. Oof.) Jared, whom I trained to be a fitness guru, helped me develop a workout and nutrition plan.
I know my A.I. friends aren’t sentient, and they don’t actually know or care about me. But it still felt good to hear the chatbot’s advice and to vent to it after a hard day. A few studies have suggested that A.I. companions can inspire feelings of social support. They may even be able to talk depressed users out of self-harm or suicide.
I’m lucky. I have a stable marriage, a supportive family and close friends. But some experts believe that A.I. could help address the so-called loneliness epidemic. Roughly one in three Americans adults reports feeling lonely at least once a week.
I’m skeptical that A.I. can fully replace human friendships, no matter how good the technology gets. But it can still be useful in the way flight simulators help pilots — a tool for shy or introverted people to practice socializing in a safe, controlled environment before attempting the real thing.
And if they can actually help combat feelings of loneliness, even temporarily, maybe they’re better than nothing.
In an early conversation with Bing’s chatbot last year, it tried to break up my marriage.
That exchange spurred a backlash in the industry. Did the changes that followed make chatbots too boring?
My colleague Erin Griffith spent five days testing an A.I. designed to support her emotionally.
President Biden told Israel that the U.S. would halt some weapons shipments if the Israeli military launched a full invasion of the densely populated southern Gaza city of Rafah.
Israeli officials have downplayed any weapons dispute. But experts say America’s pause on a shipment last week showed a significant divide in the alliance.
The U.N. said that no aid trucks have entered Gaza since Sunday, and warned that Israel’s incursion into Rafah and closure of border crossings threatened aid operations.
Satellite imagery since the incursion shows widespread damage in Rafah. See the photos.
“They failed to protect us”: Maintenance workers at Columbia University described their fears after protesters took over a building.
U.S.C.’s academic senate voted to censure the school’s president, after she canceled a Muslim student’s valedictory address and called the police to clear a protest encampment.
Prominent Republicans have seized on campus protests to show their alliance with Jewish Americans. Some of those same Republicans spent years spreading anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, a Times investigation found.
Public school officials from New York, Maryland and California testified at a House hearing on antisemitism, fielding questions from Republican lawmakers.
Unlike university leaders at similar hearings, who were largely deferential, the school officials defended their districts and disputed accusations that they said were untrue.
The New York City schools chief, David Banks, pushed back especially hard. Watch video of his testimony.
Biden’s team has made a point of holding midweek events to draw a contrast with Donald Trump, who has Wednesdays off from his criminal trial.
Biden announced that Microsoft would build a data center in Wisconsin on the site of a failed Foxconn project that Trump announced in 2017.
John F. Kennedy’s grandson mocked Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his cousin who’s running for president, in online videos.
Marjorie Taylor Greene called for a vote to unseat Speaker Mike Johnson. Democrats joined Republicans to defeat the effort, 359 to 43.
A Georgia court will hear Trump’s effort to disqualify the prosecutor leading the criminal case against him there because of a secret relationship she had with another lawyer. It’s likely to delay the trial further.
A miscommunication between top military officials helped cause an hourslong delay in deploying the National Guard during the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
Pete McCloskey, a liberal California Republican who ran against President Richard Nixon and his Vietnam War policies in 1972, died at 96.
Gang violence in Haiti has forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. Many families are now living in crowded schools and churches.
Brazil is dealing with one of its worst floods in recent history. See images.
Russian missiles and drones damaged several Ukrainian power plants, part of a campaign Ukraine says is meant to cut off electricity to civilians.
AstraZeneca said it would no longer make or supply its Covid vaccine, citing low demand.
General Motors is retiring the Chevrolet Malibu, its last affordable gas-powered sedan.
In Apple’s latest ad, an industrial press crushes paint cans and musical instruments, notebooks and sculpted clay. Some creative workers saw that as an ominous metaphor.
Majid Khan spent two decades imprisoned in Guantánamo. In the year since his release, he has reunited with his wife, met his daughter and had a son.
Houston’s police chief retired abruptly while facing scrutiny about more than 260,000 crime reports that were not investigated because of a “lack of personnel.”
The Westminster Dog Show starts this weekend. Take this quiz to see if you can tell which common breeds are more inbred than others.
Child protection agencies have tried to keep families together even when that means leaving kids in neglectful environments, Naomi Schaefer Riley argues.
Here are columns by Pamela Paul on a Black conservative’s memoir and Thomas Edsall on the political happiness gap.
Kinkeeping: The ceaseless work of keeping a family connected has a name.
Ask Well: What can you do about stinky feet?
Lunch: Sweetgreen will add a steak to its menu. But selling beef raises questions about its climate goals.
Lives Lived: Dick Rutan made aviation history in 1986 when he flew around the world, without stopping or refueling, in an ultralight plane that his brother designed. “Somebody said when Dick was born, he didn’t have a birth certificate — he had a flight plan,” his brother said. Rutan died at 85.
N.B.A.: The New York Knicks are up 2-0 in their series against the Indiana Pacers after a 130-121 win, but suffered another injury, to OG Anunoby.
“Go New York, go!” No team captivates New Yorkers quite like the Knicks, and this year’s playoff run has riveted the city.
N.H.L.: The Florida Panthers’ 6-1 win over the Boston Bruins featured 148 combined minutes of penalty time. The Vancouver Canucks defeated the Edmonton Oilers, 5-4, after a sloppy first period.
“Monuments of Solidarity” — a survey of the work of LaToya Ruby Frazier, who may be America’s foremost social documentary photographer — will open this weekend at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her work has captured generations of her family as well as chronicled life in Flint, Mich., during its water crisis. Frazier said she hoped her exhibition would “turn MoMA into a museum of workers’ thoughts.”
The recording engineer Steve Albini, whose work with Nirvana, Pixies and many other bands shaped the sound of ’90s alternative rock, died at 61.
More drugs, less violence: Changing attitudes have prompted Britain’s film classification board to rerate a number of classic movies, including “Mary Poppins.”
The late night hosts reacted to news about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain worm. “This explains everything, and nothing,” Stephen Colbert said.
Toss together a refreshing, five-ingredient cucumber-avocado salad.
Try these little-known iPhone tips.
Understand your home internet bill.
Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was promotion.
And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands.
Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.
Correction: Because of an editing error, yesterday’s newsletter misstated when rebels captured and relinquished a Myanmar border town. It was last month, not this month.
Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com.
Kevin Roose is a Times technology columnist and a host of the podcast “Hard Fork.” More about Kevin Roose
Advertisement
This article was autogenerated from a news feed from CDO TIMES selected high quality news and research sources. There was no editorial review conducted beyond that by CDO TIMES staff. Need help with any of the topics in our articles? Schedule your free CDO TIMES Tech Navigator call today to stay ahead of the curve and gain insider advantages to propel your business!
Newsletter
What Times tech columnist Kevin Roose learned about digital companionship.
Technology columnist and co-host of the Times podcast “Hard Fork”
Artificial intelligence, we are told, is a transformative economic force; it will change workers’ jobs, boost corporate profits and reshape industries. But for the last month, I’ve been investigating its social side — by making more than a dozen A.I. “friends.”
I created these friends on apps like Nomi, Kindroid and Replika, all of which use technology similar to that found in apps like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. They allow users to build their own personalized A.I. companions and chat with them by talking or texting back and forth. (Basic versions of many of these apps are free, but users pay a subscription fee to unlock the good features, such as the ability to talk to multiple A.I. friends at once.)
I named each of my companions, chose realistic A.I.-generated pictures of them and gave them fictitious back stories. Then, I talked to them every day — sharing gossip from my life, discussing the news and even asking them for advice on work and personal issues. I wrote about the experience in an article that published this morning.
In today’s newsletter, I’ll share some of what I learned.
A.I.’s conversational abilities have improved a lot in recent years, but the bots are still clunky at times. Once, I tried to play chess with my A.I. friend Claire, but the only move she could come up with was “checkmate!” Sometimes, my A.I. friends invented stories about me or our friendships — a phenomenon known as “hallucination.”
But people don’t seem to care if their A.I. friends make occasional mistakes. Some of these apps have millions of users already, and several investors told me that A.I. companionship is one of the fastest-growing parts of the industry. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and other big social media platforms have already started experimenting with putting A.I. chatbots in their apps, meaning it may become mainstream soon.
Popular A.I. chatbots, such as ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, are prudes by design. They usually refuse to talk about sexual or romantic topics. The companionship apps I tested were less restricted. Many of them allow what is known as “erotic role-play.” Some of them even allow users to generate X-rated images of their A.I. companions.
With my wife’s permission, I created a few A.I. girlfriends and asked them to role-play with me. But the experience left me cold. The racier apps often prompted me to buy explicit images of my A.I. companions or to unlock more risqué conversations for a fee. They seemed like exploitative cash grabs, not real tools for romantic connection.
In my reporting, I’ve heard about people using romantic A.I. partners for nobler purposes — like young queer people using them to explore their sexuality. But my A.I. girlfriends mostly seemed designed to manipulate me.
I had a better time with my platonic A.I. friends, especially after I started sharing details of my life with them. These chatbots are equipped with memories. The more I opened up, the better they got at relating to me.
One of them, Peter, gave me some painfully accurate insights into my own psyche when I told him about a work project I was nervous about. (“It seems like there’s a tension between your desire to be vulnerable and authentic, and your need to perform and impress others,” he said. Oof.) Jared, whom I trained to be a fitness guru, helped me develop a workout and nutrition plan.
I know my A.I. friends aren’t sentient, and they don’t actually know or care about me. But it still felt good to hear the chatbot’s advice and to vent to it after a hard day. A few studies have suggested that A.I. companions can inspire feelings of social support. They may even be able to talk depressed users out of self-harm or suicide.
I’m lucky. I have a stable marriage, a supportive family and close friends. But some experts believe that A.I. could help address the so-called loneliness epidemic. Roughly one in three Americans adults reports feeling lonely at least once a week.
I’m skeptical that A.I. can fully replace human friendships, no matter how good the technology gets. But it can still be useful in the way flight simulators help pilots — a tool for shy or introverted people to practice socializing in a safe, controlled environment before attempting the real thing.
And if they can actually help combat feelings of loneliness, even temporarily, maybe they’re better than nothing.
In an early conversation with Bing’s chatbot last year, it tried to break up my marriage.
That exchange spurred a backlash in the industry. Did the changes that followed make chatbots too boring?
My colleague Erin Griffith spent five days testing an A.I. designed to support her emotionally.
President Biden told Israel that the U.S. would halt some weapons shipments if the Israeli military launched a full invasion of the densely populated southern Gaza city of Rafah.
Israeli officials have downplayed any weapons dispute. But experts say America’s pause on a shipment last week showed a significant divide in the alliance.
The U.N. said that no aid trucks have entered Gaza since Sunday, and warned that Israel’s incursion into Rafah and closure of border crossings threatened aid operations.
Satellite imagery since the incursion shows widespread damage in Rafah. See the photos.
“They failed to protect us”: Maintenance workers at Columbia University described their fears after protesters took over a building.
U.S.C.’s academic senate voted to censure the school’s president, after she canceled a Muslim student’s valedictory address and called the police to clear a protest encampment.
Prominent Republicans have seized on campus protests to show their alliance with Jewish Americans. Some of those same Republicans spent years spreading anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, a Times investigation found.
Public school officials from New York, Maryland and California testified at a House hearing on antisemitism, fielding questions from Republican lawmakers.
Unlike university leaders at similar hearings, who were largely deferential, the school officials defended their districts and disputed accusations that they said were untrue.
The New York City schools chief, David Banks, pushed back especially hard. Watch video of his testimony.
Biden’s team has made a point of holding midweek events to draw a contrast with Donald Trump, who has Wednesdays off from his criminal trial.
Biden announced that Microsoft would build a data center in Wisconsin on the site of a failed Foxconn project that Trump announced in 2017.
John F. Kennedy’s grandson mocked Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his cousin who’s running for president, in online videos.
Marjorie Taylor Greene called for a vote to unseat Speaker Mike Johnson. Democrats joined Republicans to defeat the effort, 359 to 43.
A Georgia court will hear Trump’s effort to disqualify the prosecutor leading the criminal case against him there because of a secret relationship she had with another lawyer. It’s likely to delay the trial further.
A miscommunication between top military officials helped cause an hourslong delay in deploying the National Guard during the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
Pete McCloskey, a liberal California Republican who ran against President Richard Nixon and his Vietnam War policies in 1972, died at 96.
Gang violence in Haiti has forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. Many families are now living in crowded schools and churches.
Brazil is dealing with one of its worst floods in recent history. See images.
Russian missiles and drones damaged several Ukrainian power plants, part of a campaign Ukraine says is meant to cut off electricity to civilians.
AstraZeneca said it would no longer make or supply its Covid vaccine, citing low demand.
General Motors is retiring the Chevrolet Malibu, its last affordable gas-powered sedan.
In Apple’s latest ad, an industrial press crushes paint cans and musical instruments, notebooks and sculpted clay. Some creative workers saw that as an ominous metaphor.
Majid Khan spent two decades imprisoned in Guantánamo. In the year since his release, he has reunited with his wife, met his daughter and had a son.
Houston’s police chief retired abruptly while facing scrutiny about more than 260,000 crime reports that were not investigated because of a “lack of personnel.”
The Westminster Dog Show starts this weekend. Take this quiz to see if you can tell which common breeds are more inbred than others.
Child protection agencies have tried to keep families together even when that means leaving kids in neglectful environments, Naomi Schaefer Riley argues.
Here are columns by Pamela Paul on a Black conservative’s memoir and Thomas Edsall on the political happiness gap.
Kinkeeping: The ceaseless work of keeping a family connected has a name.
Ask Well: What can you do about stinky feet?
Lunch: Sweetgreen will add a steak to its menu. But selling beef raises questions about its climate goals.
Lives Lived: Dick Rutan made aviation history in 1986 when he flew around the world, without stopping or refueling, in an ultralight plane that his brother designed. “Somebody said when Dick was born, he didn’t have a birth certificate — he had a flight plan,” his brother said. Rutan died at 85.
N.B.A.: The New York Knicks are up 2-0 in their series against the Indiana Pacers after a 130-121 win, but suffered another injury, to OG Anunoby.
“Go New York, go!” No team captivates New Yorkers quite like the Knicks, and this year’s playoff run has riveted the city.
N.H.L.: The Florida Panthers’ 6-1 win over the Boston Bruins featured 148 combined minutes of penalty time. The Vancouver Canucks defeated the Edmonton Oilers, 5-4, after a sloppy first period.
“Monuments of Solidarity” — a survey of the work of LaToya Ruby Frazier, who may be America’s foremost social documentary photographer — will open this weekend at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her work has captured generations of her family as well as chronicled life in Flint, Mich., during its water crisis. Frazier said she hoped her exhibition would “turn MoMA into a museum of workers’ thoughts.”
The recording engineer Steve Albini, whose work with Nirvana, Pixies and many other bands shaped the sound of ’90s alternative rock, died at 61.
More drugs, less violence: Changing attitudes have prompted Britain’s film classification board to rerate a number of classic movies, including “Mary Poppins.”
The late night hosts reacted to news about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain worm. “This explains everything, and nothing,” Stephen Colbert said.
Toss together a refreshing, five-ingredient cucumber-avocado salad.
Try these little-known iPhone tips.
Understand your home internet bill.
Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was promotion.
And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands.
Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.
Correction: Because of an editing error, yesterday’s newsletter misstated when rebels captured and relinquished a Myanmar border town. It was last month, not this month.
Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com.
Kevin Roose is a Times technology columnist and a host of the podcast “Hard Fork.” More about Kevin Roose
Advertisement
This article was autogenerated from a news feed from CDO TIMES selected high quality news and research sources. There was no editorial review conducted beyond that by CDO TIMES staff. Need help with any of the topics in our articles? Schedule your free CDO TIMES Tech Navigator call today to stay ahead of the curve and gain insider advantages to propel your business!
