ArtificiaLove

Japan has a massive problem with loneliness. Almost 70% of unmarried men and 60% of unmarried women aged 18-34 are not in any form of relationship with the opposite sex (Source: National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Japan). Over the past years this relationship crisis has spurred a new multimillion-dollar virtual romance industry, which primarily aims to fill this emotional void through technology. At the forefront of this new industry stands a company called Gatebox, a company selling a digital assistant, powered by AI, which aims to be a pseudo-girlfriend. The device can be linked to your smartphone, making it possible to create a sense of relationship. It even sends you messages, when you are at work, like “come back home”. In the western world, many will laugh about this vision, but more and more people actually sign up for this or similar services. It allows them to retreat from human relationships into a fantasy of submission and titillation. Thi...

Welcome back to to Artifici(Al)ove, today we are going to investigate something that may sound foreign to you, that may also make you feel uncomfortable just by visualizing it. Today we are talking about the up and coming emergence of lifelike AI dolls and the attraction to this phenomenon.  From the famous tag line of the 1972 science fiction western thriller Westworld, “boy, do we have a vacation for you”, a world to live out your craziest fantasies minus the “human” repercussions is born. The movie takes place in a fantastical world where people can pay to interact in everyday environments with a catch, its run by androids who quiescently look indistinguishable to human beings. As the movie states “for a small payment you can live out your wildest dreams.” Now this may seem far-fetched, but the underlining message of non-human interplay is not far from what we are experiencing today. The mix of AI and human like dolls is allowing the fantastical Westworld fantasy to b...

Internet, since its creation and implementation to the public, has brought up many benefits to most of our society. Communicating is now easier than ever, information has become more and more readily available through the internet, since its creation and implementation to the public, has brought up many benefits to most of our society. Introverts can now have their very own online girlfriends. They're not only on the web though, they come as apps and games as well across many other platforms. And in recent times, their growth from simple decision tree games such as Date Ariane to full-out AI systems such as Microsoft's Ruuh hasn't gone unnoticed. Relationships and sex is at the core of human essence, and a ubiquitous platform such as the internet didn't take long to catch up. In the beginnings, it wasn't through games and definitely not AI that you 'met' your online girlfriend. Chat Rooms are at the core of it all. These were the first form of the on...

Artificial intelligence ( AI ) is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems - Google When we think of a human being, what is the first thought to pop in our minds? Is it the  ability to communicate amongst each other in different languages across the globe? Is it the way we show emotions and react to those emotions accordingly? Or is it the  way we are physically made including all the parts that make our unique selves, us.  Now what if I told you that we lived in a world where a non-birthed being could do  the same? What if your therapist was a robot who could help diagnose you and treat your depression, you built your own girlfriend who you now know on a personal level and you come home to a virtual friend who asks you how your day was. This might seem like some Ashley-O Black Mirror shit, but the newest advances of AI in relation to human interaction are very real and showing no signs of ...