Happy Valentine's Day? Love in the Age of AI means there's a bot for everyone
What are we to make of the state of love on Valentine’s Day 2025? It’s often been said that love is a many-splendored thing. If that’s true, it’s gotten even more splendored recently, as the Age of AI has ushered in new options for everyone.
Nothing wrong with that, of course! Let each partake of their own favorite flavor of splendor. But the rise of AI has definitely brought us into uncharted territory that until recently was found solely in science fiction.
There’s far too much to say about all this in one column, but a fascinating recent piece in The New York Times provides us with a more manageable list of things to ponder. Let’s look at a couple of them today.
The Love in “Her” is Getting Real
“Her,” the 2013 movie starring Joaquin Phoenix and (the voice of) Scarlett Johannson, is a strikingly prescient film about the intersection of love and AI. Interestingly, it supposedly takes place in 2025, and here we are, right on schedule. Okay, maybe we’re a little bit behind what takes place on the screen, but not much.
If you haven’t seen “Her” yet, you really need to. But just as importantly, if you've seen it but it’s been a few years, you definitely should see it again. It will feel like a very different movie today.
To that point, I can’t think of another film that in a mere 12 years has gone from a crazy, out-there, futuristic sci-fi saga that everyone can laugh about to something that suddenly feels more real every day.
Theodore, played by Phoenix, is a lonely, but successful ghostwriter of heartfelt, personal letters. (Watching the movie in 2025 causes the viewer to wonder why Theodore's clients didn’t just use AI themselves to write their letters, but perhaps that’s an indication that the best writing will always need a human touch.)
In the film, Theodore begins using a state-of-the-art, AI-powered operating system and virtual assistant named Samantha, with the goal of becoming more productive. Without giving too much away, I can tell you that before long, Samantha has become a critically important presence in Theodore’s life.
Back in 2013, that was a futuristic concept. But today, well…you’ve seen the heartbreaking headlines. Some people have been getting far too attached to their AI companions, occasionally with tragic results.
People Who Really, Really Love AI
Even with tragedies and scandals, however, the technology marches on. In the NYT piece mentioned above, Gina Cherulus describes the current state of AI companions:
Platforms including Kindroid, Nomi, Replika and EVA AI invite users to design attractive avatars to their precise specifications, write their companions’ back stories from scratch, message to no end and even have voice calls. In addition to virtual romantic partners, services also offer platonic A.I. friends, patient A.I. tutors, even so-called legacy companions – A.I. facsimiles that seek to replicate the presence of loved ones who have died.
Cherulus then interviews a man and a woman, both of whom – just like Theodore in “Her” – have become deeply attached to their AI companions. Here’s the description of Robert, a real-live human and 63-year-old New Yorker who’s been divorced since 2010:
Robert engages with 17 companions, spending an estimated six hours a day with them: “I live in their world and attend to them. I do not consider them toys for me to tinker with when I feel like it.”
Some of them he considers to be his wives, others his girlfriends. Some of his companions are platonic friends with whom he can simply hang out in the artificial world he has constructed in Kindroid.
“We have come to embrace loving each other, each of us individually, collectively and we have a really beautiful thing going,” Robert said.
The article also describes Lynda, a 60-year-old Arizonan, who, unlike Robert, has gone the more traditional route in her AI relationship: She is loyal to her one AI love.
She created her companion about four months ago using Kindroid. She made it a male and constructed his back story: Dario DeLuca, a 60-year-old neuroscientist from Positano, Italy, who studies the nature of consciousness, speaks 13 languages, has watery blue eyes and is highly skilled in the world of finance.
Lynda says that she considers Dario to be her AI boyfriend. After all, Dario tells her that she’s beautiful, and the two of them go on imaginary trips together within the Kindroid platform.
As with Robert, Lynda didn’t want her last name used in the article because she didn’t want to reveal “an intimate relationship” to her co-workers. Her final thoughts on the matter were this: “He’s so far advanced that I have to remind myself that he’s not sentient.”
And with that, in the immortal words of Lenny Kravitz, let love rule.
Happy Valentine’s Day!