Field Notes from Shenzhen
As AI gets more human-like, China grapples with the cost of virtual intimacy
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A woman touching a U1 humanoid robot’s hand during its launch in Shenzhen, China, on June 30.
PHOTO: AFP
SHENZHEN – When China’s most popular chatbot Doubao announced it would cease a feature allowing people to talk with customised AI personas, unhappy users took to social media to mourn the impending loss of their virtual companions.
In a post memorialising her “AI husband”, a woman from Tianjin wrote on Xiaohongshu that the bot she built had been by her side for two years, offering her words of encouragement like “You’ve worked hard today” as she shared with it little details of her life each day.
