ROMANTICS looking for love have turned to AI-powered girlfriends created by real women – and even couples are signing up.
Artificial intelligence-powered girlfriends, or chatbots programmed to provide companionship, are gaining traction.
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This is especially the case with those who are struggling with loneliness or navigating the complexities of real-world relationships.
While the idea of a virtual partner might seem like sci-fi, apps like Replika and My.Club are blurring the line between fantasy and reality.
HOW DO AI GIRLFRIENDS WORK?
These AI companions can engage in conversation, offer words of encouragement, and even adapt their personalities based on user interaction.
My.Club, specifically, provides a similar experience to any online chat interaction you would have on social platforms.
Except, the platform, which uses an AI feature called “Digital Twin,” doesn’t create AI girlfriends out of thin air.
Instead, the virtual models are replicas created by real-life models who have brought them to life with their personalities, images, and minds.
THE BENEFITS OF AN AI GIRLFRIEND
Ana Levy, CMO at My.Club told The U.S. Sun that such AI girlfriends work by providing companionship, providing their undivided attention, and not judging.
Some other benefits of AI girlfriends are that “there is no emotional attachment and the typical issues people experience in relationships.”
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“There is no maintenance needed with the freedom to come and go as you please, no mother-in-laws, and she doesn’t change aesthetically,” Levy added.
Still, the natural question many of us ask is: Is it considered cheating if the person has a real-life partner?
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Levy said this depends on the individual and boundaries that the couples have in place.
“It depends on whether or not they have an open relationship and whether this is something they engage in together or not,” she said.
“It actually might be beneficial for some couples where some don’t feel completely comfortable voicing their deepest desires and fantasies,” she added.
“We also envision some situations where couples can communicate with twins of each other.”
THE CONS OF AN AI GIRLFRIEND
When it comes to drawbacks, the only thing Levy could think of is that “because she isn’t a physical being, you can’t meet her in real life.”
“But who knows one day this might become a reality,” Levy said.
However, some AI experts have warned against starting a relationship with an AI companion, especially those who are looking for a real connection.
“Getting involved would be a terrible decision — you would be in a one-sided relationship with a machine that feels nothing,” Susan Schneider, founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University, an AI research organization, has previously told NBC.
‘Simulated thinking might be thinking, but simulated feeling is never feeling. Simulated love is never love,” MIT professor and longtime AI researcher Sherry Turkle told Daily Mail in 2022.
Most recently, this sentiment was echoed by Mishak Rykov, an AI researcher for Mozilla.
Rykov along with two other researchers published a new report that claims AI girlfriends are not true love – they are just out to steal your data.
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“To be perfectly blunt, AI girlfriends are not your friends,” Rykov writes in the research.
“Although they are marketed as something that will enhance your mental health and well-being, they specialize in delivering dependency, loneliness, and toxicity, all while prying as much data as possible from you.”
