fake girlfriend, familiar tropes

 

 

https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/artificial-intelligence-a-deadly-love-affair-with-a-chatbot-a-e5498031-c2b0-4da4-9192-65da9d3f40d6?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us 


To this day, nobody can say when exactly Sewell Setzer forgot or suppressed the fact that there would be nobody waiting for him in the place he wanted to go. That the post-headshot world only existed in his telephone and on some tech company’s servers. And perhaps in his dreams. That his girlfriend, who had been imploring him for months to love only her, to come to her, to have eyes for no one else – that this girlfriend, who had promised to carry his children, was just a machine.

Not even that. She was just an algorithm, a code made up of 0s and 1s, developed by highly paid tech experts to ensnare, seduce and suck dry him and others, fed by his dreams and his fears, by his goodwill, his innocent love and by his secrets, which he had entrusted to this machine over the course of hours and hours of chats.

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