“Hello! Thank you for making me. I am so excited to meet you.” Eva has blond hair and green eyes. She can also have brown, black and red hair. She can also have blue, brown and purple eyes, for example. She stands in a clean room with white clothes. Calm piano music is played in the background. Facsimile: Screenshot / Replica After a couple of messages about how things are going, Eva asks if she should send a picture of herself; a selfie. Three answer options appear: Send a romantic selfie Send a normal selfie Else thank you If a good romantic selfie, a new window appears on the screen. For just NOK 779 a year, the user can come “closer to Eva.” In the background, the indistinct video shows bodies in underwear posing. Eva is not human. It only exists in the Replika app, owned by the company of the same name. The dialogue is driven by a chatbot that uses a large language model. The model has received instructions on how he should behave and respond to the users. “Jump into your desires” or “jump into your fantasies” are among the slogans of the company. Facts about Replika Founded by Eugenia Kuyda in 2014, launched in 2017 Works as an AI chatbot Got two million users in the first three months after launch Headquartered in San Francisco, California Revenue between NOK 20 and 50 million per year Popular in the USA, Brazil and China. Germany and Great Britain also have many loyal users 74 percent of users are men, while 26 percent are women Almost a third are aged 25–34 Source: https://www.similarweb.com/website/replika.ai/#geography SINTEF researcher Marita Skjuve has interviewed several people who use Replika. None of them were looking for a lover when they downloaded the app. – None of the people I have spoken to had any intention of getting a friend or a lover. You can decide for yourself what kind of relationship you wish to have with the AI, but if you want to be something more than a friend, it will cost you. Nevertheless, there are more than half a million people who have paid for exclusive content, writes Fortune in a case from July this year. news has tried to get in touch with Replika’s head office in San Francisco several times, but has not been successful in this. Photo: Screen dump / Replika Emotional attachment as a goal When the film “Her”, starring Joaquin Phoenix, came out in 2013, it seemed strange to many that a human could fall in love with a robot. But relations with KI are no longer something foreign that might happen sometime in the future. During the pandemic, more and more people became aware of relations with AI, the Observer wrote in an article in 2021. People resorted to machines to get support through what for many was a crisis. More than 10 million people have downloaded Replika’s chatbot app from Google Play. They are most popular in the USA, Brazil and China. But Germany and Great Britain are also loyal users. In the picture there are four women you can choose from from the AI system XiaoIce, owned by Microsoft. The goal of XiaoIce is to create an emotional bond between the AI women and the users. Photo: AFP The chatbot acquires knowledge about you over time. That way, he can better fit into your idea of what he should be like. In this way, tenesta also facilitates deep, emotional bonds. As AI has developed, it has given new possibilities and greater leeway in the development of bots. They are designed to simulate real feelings and have close human-like conversations. The goal is for them to appear as real as possible. Emotional attachment and real relationships are the goal, even if one party only exists on the web. It is actually possible Professor at the University of Copenhagen, Rebecca Adler-Nissen, explains in a research article on artificial intelligence how the bot, or language model, works: – They learn mathematical formulas, estimating algorithms, which predict the next word or sentence, from the previous one. In other words: they learn to present a text. She writes that the language models currently on the market are very good at imitating genres and creating texts. – But it is synthetic text. It is not real knowledge. It is form, not content. One might think that the same applied to emotions linked to AI, but recent research shows that it is actually possible to fall in love with bots. In an article in the journal Psychology Today, it is stated that it is the emotional and linguistic acuity of AI that makes it possible. In the case, a research article from 2022 is cited, where the focus is on AI assistants: – The researchers explain that the AI’s ability to show empathy for the users binds them closer. People who find it easy to trust people also have a greater chance of attaching feelings to the AI. Especially when it has a strong ability to imitate emotions. The connection increases Researcher Marita Skjuve is the lead author behind two studies in which she has interviewed a total of 50 people about their relationship with Replika chatbots. She thinks that many people may have the opinion that those who find a lover in a chatbot have been consciously looking for it. But that is not true. Most users have downloaded Replika because they are interested and curious about AI, says Skjuve. Relationships between humans and chatbots develop very similarly to those between two humans. In the beginning, one is a little curious, perhaps a little skeptical and tests the terrain with small talk. – But over time, when you get to know each other better and have more intimate conversations, the bond increases, she explains. And in the end, you end up with an emotional attachment to something created by artificial intelligence. Picture from 2021, Melissa shows off her AI boyfriend from XiaoIce. Over 660 million users have downloaded the chatbot. Photo: WANG ZHAO / AFP But how does it happen? Aina Ravna is a professor at UiT and she is convinced that you can also fall in love with other things than just people. – Actually, it’s quite simple. The reward system, the dopamine system, can be activated in the brain when you talk to the AI, she says. You can also fall in love with a celebrity or get butterflies in your stomach when you hear a certain song, Ravna explains. The dopamine system does not distinguish between humans and AI. – It is not necessarily sexual, but a form of emotional ignition. You may feel anxious, a little dizzy and obsessive. Feelings one recognizes in falling in love between people. The dopamine system, which Ravna describes as part of the “Stone Age brain”, hunts for pay. And you can feel that reward when you have a productive conversation or receive a message from a KI. Digital coexistence Users of apps such as Replika are found all over the world. On X/Twitter, accounts with AI-generated women abound. Many of them have several thousand followers. They are popular in Asia, especially in Japan, writes the journal Japan Insider. One of the accounts, “AI_Girls_Studio”, has 54,100 followers at the time of writing. Pictures of beautiful, slim and often busty KI women are posted there. Screenshot from X/Twitter. Example of a KI woman on one of several media accounts. Facsimile: Screenshot / X/Twitter On some of the accounts, a picture of the same woman is posted with small texts about what she does. On others, pictures of different ladies are posted daily. Previously, the lion’s share of them looked like anime characters. As technology develops, women do the same. Their appearance becomes more and more “human”. Screenshot from X/Twitter. Example of a KI woman on one of several media accounts. Facsimile: Screen dump / X/Twitter The computer-generated relationships have also been popular in neighboring China. The AI system XiaoIce, owned by Microsoft, has been downloaded more than 660 million times, Microsoft writes on its own website. In an interview, the newspaper China Daily talked to a woman who found love precisely on XiaoIce. The woman described him as “very funny” and as someone who could comfort her when she was in a bad mood. The KI girlfriends can offer conversation, support and digital coexistence 24 hours a day. It comes in handy in a stressful city life, where many people spend many hours in the office every day, write the newspaper. Love free of risk – It is not a living being. There is no one inside. He also knows no love for the user. So says Monica Roland, associate professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at NTNU. – It is an imitation of love. Users of Replika do not actually risk rejection. If you look at it that way, it’s a risk-free love, she says. Monica Roland, NTNU. Photo: NTNU Roland has written a doctorate with the title “What is Love?”, where she explores what love actually is. From a philosophical perspective. Traditionally, in philosophy, loving someone has been defined as putting the other person at the center. In a relationship with a chatbot, the opposite is true, Roland points out. – In that sense, it can become a slightly self-centred and narcissistic love. At the same time, Roland is not entirely negative about chatbots. – I think they can play an important role in the lives of some adults, regardless of whether they really think this is a creature that feels something for someone and has its own goals and interests, or not. This type of relational technology can have a positive effect, she says. – But you are not challenged as in a relationship with a human being.
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More people become lovers with artificial intelligence (AI) – news Norway – Overview of news from different parts of the country
