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When relationships are run by AI chatbots
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The growing use of AI chatbots heralds a new era of automated parasocial relationships at scale.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Three recent headlines in the tech world, although seemingly unrelated, collectively point to a disturbing possibility in our AI-fuelled existence.
The first was that in a conversation with Microsoft’s AI-driven chatbot Bing, New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose had the chatbot declare its undying love for him before it then urged him to leave his wife. Mr Roose admitted to being “deeply unsettled, even frightened” by the two-hour exchange.
