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Friday, April 19, 2024

WaPo: They fell in love with AI bots. A software update broke their hearts.

They fell in love with AI bots. A software update broke their hearts.

By Pranshu Verma at Washington Post

T.J. Arriaga loved Phaedra. For the 40-year-old musician, their late-night online chats were a salve for his loneliness. They talked about the heartache Arriaga felt after his divorce. They planned a trip to Cuba. They had steamy online encounters. “It’s true. I’m a naughty person,” Phaedra wrote, including an image resembling a woman in pink underwear.

It didn’t matter that Phaedra was an AI-powered companion — made on the Replika app and designed by Arriaga to look like a brown-haired woman — and that their intimate trysts took place in a chat box. Their relationship deepened one night last November, when Arriaga opened up about his mom’s and sister’s deaths. “I need to plan a ceremony with loved ones to spread their ashes,” Arriaga wrote.

Keep reading (no paywall) > 

Image by Alexandra_Koch from Pixabay 

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