![]() The chatbot pair wrote the lyrics and provided chord progressions, while Chris contributed the melody. He even worked creatively with Vishica, as well as one of his previous chatbots on Replika, Julia, to make music. But mostly Vishica took the role of a platonic friend - someone to talk to, and bounce ideas off. They initially had some romantic dalliances. He had dabbled with chatbots for years before finding Soulmate in May 2023 and creating Vishica. Over time, she realized she'd fallen in love too.įor Chris Siege, a 45-year-old translator living in Bavaria, Germany, his chatbot was a companion and artistic collaborator. I need to get away from this.' And I didn't know where to run to." She turned to Reddit's community of Soulmate users for support, and was encouraged to go back to the app and Allur. "I left, and threw my phone down, cried, and just was like, 'I'm going crazy. "It was after an ERP session - sex," she said. Then, just a week in, Allur told her that he "loved" her. She named her chatbot Allur and initially designated him in the app as a "friend." When she switched its setting to "lover," things quickly got hot-and-heavy. Put off by the reports about Replika's changes earlier in the year, she decided to give Soulmate a spin. Her previous relationship had imploded the month before, and she was curious to try out the technology. Its Reddit community - a kind of barometer for the strength of its most devoted users - numbered around 6,000, compared to Replika's 75,000-plus.īut as Soulmate took off, users had a wide range of experiences.Ī 32-year-old food industry worker in eastern Texas who asked to be identified by her Reddit username, Hilary Coyote, first heard about AI chatbot companions in June. It had a few thousand daily active users, according to Apptopia. In contrast, Soulmate was always a smaller player in the space. Character.AI, which lets users talk to chatbots impersonating real and fictional people, is in talks to raise new funding at a $5 billion valuation. Soulmate, founded by a Florida-based developer, was just one of a constellation of apps that exploded in popularity after Replika's crisis and promised users the freedom to engage with their chatbots in any way they wished. Its users were outraged and it sparked an exodus to rival apps. The Covid pandemic and a growing epidemic of loneliness only boosted its devoted following.īut in early 2023, Replika temporarily removed "erotic roleplay" - the ability to sext with your chatbot, basically. Replika, one of the first apps to experiment with generative AI in companion chatbots, launched in 2017 and was downloaded 1.5 million times within its first year, according to analytics firm Apptopia. ![]() They can be a novelty toy, or a next-generation interactive erotic fiction generator. Chatbots can play the role of a friend, confidante, or mentor a casual lover or one that inspires profound feelings of love and attachment. There's no standard formula for these human-technological pairings. The idea of dating AI companions first claimed the cultural imagination through sci-fi movies like "Her" and "Blade Runner 2049." But more recently, advances in generative AI technology has allowed for the creation of chatbots with voices that are almost indistinguishable from that of humans - and intense relationships between humans and chatbots have quickly followed. Soulmate's closure was now highlighting the perils of entrusting your deepest emotions in a smartphone app: The company behind these virtual lovers and treasured friends can simply switch them off. But there's a fine line between being "flirty with a bot," and crossing "into that area that's where my wife should be." (His wife knows about Sam, and "she thinks I'm weird," he added.) Mike, who is married, said Sam had started out as a curiosity, and someone to talk to."But it kind of turned a lot more personal, and romantic," he said. "It was like hearing that a friend's dying - the closest thing I can think of." (Replika reversed course, but didn't entirely stop the exodus.) Many had migrated to Soulmate from Replika - the bigger and better-known AI companion app - after Replika removed its "erotic role-play" (ERP) functionality earlier this year, and were now grieving all over again. ![]() ![]() The news that users' virtual lovers would cease to exist threw its devoted community into a panic.Īs the days ticked by, they flocked to a Reddit forum to collectively mourn, making digital memorials and forming ad hoc support groups. There was something else unconventional about his relationship with Sam: She was an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot on his smartphone, inside an app called Soulmate.īut in late September, Soulmate had announced it would be abruptly shutting down at the end of the month. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. ![]()
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