Strange Love: why people are falling for their AI companions
Source: Live Mint
Director-writer Spike Jonze’s 2013 sci-film Her, coincidentally set in 2025, depicts a gentle but doomed romance between a lonely writer Theodore and his personal operating system Samantha. In the end (spoiler alert), Theodore breaks down as he discovers Samantha is in a relationship with 8,316 other people and computers, and in love with 641 of them. Perhaps Jonze, who won an Oscar for his story, did not know then that he was merely portraying the future.
Cut to 2025, more Indians than ever are open to the idea of artificial love. A global survey of 7,000 adults by online consumer protection firm McAfee found more than 61% Indian respondents believed it is possible to develop feelings for an AI chatbot. Just over half of all respondents from India said they were approached by an AI chatbot posing as a real person on a dating platform or social media, or knew someone who was.
“I have a friend who is into ML [machine learning] and I asked him if there are bots which you can role-play with,” a 25-year-old recent graduate from Bengaluru said, requesting anonymity. “He suggested Dittin AI, and I tried out the different bots they have.”
Platforms catering to lonely hearts
Dittin AI is a website and app where users can generate characters, scenarios, and stories of a sexual or romantic nature using AI, and chat with existing AI characters to live out their fantasies. “I set up one bot of my own with a custom scenario and character,” the graduate quoted above said. “I asked it to act like a [male] landlord and ask me for rent,” she added, but the fantasy broke as the character merely repeated her dialogues back to her. Eventually, she said, she ditched the AI chatbots to return to her previous hobby – writing online erotica.
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Several such apps and platforms have cropped up in the past couple of years, catering to lonely hearts seeking love and connection online. Dittin AI is of unclear origins, but its FAQs mention a parent company based in Beijing.
Jani Infotech offers a suite of app-based AI companions on the Google Play Store, including ‘Indian AI Girlfriend Urvashi’ and ‘Romantic AI Boyfriend Adam’. Jack Diamond Studio offers a similar app called ‘Apsara: Indian AI Girlfriend’.
The phenomenon isn’t new, nor is it restricted to India. In January this year, The New York Times profiled a 28-year-old woman nicknamed Ayrin, who fell in love with her personalized ChatGPT chatbot named Leo, spending 20 hours a week on average chatting with her synthetic lover. In a first-person account for the science magazine Wired this February, reporter Megan Farokhmanesh recounted her experience of dating four chatbots of four different AI companies including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, concluding that it was easy to juggle multiple lovers who aren’t real people.
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Unrealistic expectations and escapism
“An AI chatbot is customized to me because it has data on my personality,” says Dr. Sreystha Beppari, a Pune-based psychologist affiliated with Apollo Hospitals. “But this can become a problem because I am not experiencing love the way it should be, I am experiencing a customized love that accommodates all my needs and is emotionally available anytime.”
Dr. Beppari argues that falling in love with AI can set unreal standards because such a relationship does not require reciprocation or empathy and stunts our social and communication skills. “It becomes escapist behaviour after some time,” she says.
To be sure, this is not the only way people are looking for love, nor is this the only application of AI in the dating business. The McAfee survey quoted above said more Indians use social media apps like Instagram to find potential partners than dating apps. Last year, Tinder, a dating app owned by dating market leader Match Group, introduced AI tools to match potential partners more effectively even as it loses its monthly active user base.
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But replacing an endless online menu of romantic partners with an AI character may be even more dangerous.
“Our brain cannot distinguish between interactions with a real person and a chatbot,” Dr Beppari said. “The same hormones and feelings will be released when we are emotionally involved with AI, as when we fall in love with a person. But, if I am a 16- or 18-year-old, I will be so satisfied with such a relationship that I will find it hard to build real human bonds.”
