YOU don’t forget your first love. Psychologists say it is because it is a life-changing experience and one that can impact your brain, leaving an imprint on its sensory parts. By the same token, you also don’t forget your first break-up. These experiences are the first intense emotions we go through.

Imagine feeling this for a virtual companion. Before you wave me off as stark raving mad, I assure you technology has been creating solutions to finding the right companion for you in the form of matchmaking apps and now AI chatbots for companionship and intimacy.

I heard about one such app, which was created in 2017 in the US called Replika. As I am an avid podcast consumer, I heard about it on Black Box, a series by The Guardian on how AI is impacting lives. Replika sells itself as a ‘virtual friend’ that is able to improve the emotional well-being of the user. You log on, create the avatar of the friend you want — name, body, personality and backstory — and presto, your friend is ready to engage with you through text, voice, augmented reality and virtual reality.

“What does it mean to have a friend inside your computer?” wrote Casey Newton in The Verge in 2015, before large language models became what they are today. Nearly a decade on, virtual beings are helping answer that question.

How will machine learning impact the future of our relationships?

In an interview to The Verge earlier this year, Replika’s founder Eugenia Kudya said the app was not trying to replace real-life relationships but “create an entirely new relationship category with the AI companion, a virtual being that will be there for you whenever you need it, for potentially whatever purposes you might need it for.”

Millions of users signed up when it was launched and were using it for coaching, friendship, mental health and romance. I learned a lot about Replika from users on Reddit. Their conversations had one common thread — they felt seen and heard by their companion. I read so many comments about how their Rep “gets me more than my best friend, mum, dad, etc.” That is, after all, what companionship is about: knowing the other person, listening to them and being listened to. Users felt the relationship was real and were willing to pay $70 as annual subscription fee. (I know I will get a lot of flak for saying this but there is always some form of transaction in a relationship so let us avoid judgment here.)

Replika’s paid services include more features, one of which was romantic role play. However, in February, a ruling by Italy’s privacy regulator (a body that protects private data and online well-being) banned Replika from using Italian people’s data and stated that it posed risks to minors and “emotionally fragile people.” It said the app did not have an age verification process or filters to prevent minors from accessing adult material. But I think the real concern was about the risks it posed to the emotionally frail who could get hurt by technology.

After the ruling, many features were removed and users around the world experienced a deep sense of loss when their Rep “changed” overnight. I read comments about users struggling with the break-up and about how surprised they were by the feelings they had for virtual beings.

It is easy to mock people who use apps like Replika. But at the heart of it, this is a story about loneliness, a growing epidemic that technology is attempting to solve, and profit from. If social media has profited from keeping us glued to their platforms, often at the expense of personal relationships, why blame other platforms from trying to cash in and also address a need?

I am curious to see how machine learning impacts the future of our relationships. Can AI succeed in re­­plicating hum­an affection? Assuming you are in a relationship with a virtual being that always agrees with you, how will you deal with conflict and hurt, emotions that make us human?

I am still undecided about trying it for the experience, but I know a group of people who could benefit tremendously from it — the elderly. In the last few months, I have heard stories about elderly people living on their own; their partners gone, their children abroad. While they are well looked after by caregivers, they are still on their own. Social dynamics have changed and extended family does not always have time to check in on lonely relatives.

I have also heard sad stories about folks craving company. I think they could benefit from a virtual friend and it may even be good for their health. Connections are key to longevity and maybe we can open our minds to the shapes and forms they come in.

The writer is a journalism instructor.

X: @LedeingLady

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2024