Yet another sci-fi nightmare appears to be clawing its way into reality via California, as was revealed to the masses earlier this week with the unveiling of ‘Friend’.
The promotional video released for the occasion was indistinguishable in style or tone from any of the dystopian indie films or series we’ve seen in recent years, someone accurately commenting on my repost of the trailer that “Black Mirror is supposed to be fiction”.
introducing friend. not imaginary.
— Avi (@AviSchiffmann) July 30, 2024
order now at https://t.co/7kGiH5pQVK pic.twitter.com/qU58xNvX5v
The 23 million viewers of the post were informed that Friend is an AI companion located in a pendant either hung around your neck or clipped to your clothes – wherever it can hear you or your environment, really. It has a built-in microphone that can either record ambiently or be addressed directly, and the creator, Avi Schiffmann, says that he’d like to see a camera worked into it in future, too.
It won’t talk back to you, but rather sends a text to your phone with what it has to say – just as you’d receive a message from any of your real friends. Schiffmann told US publication, The Verge, precisely how he envisions people using it by providing an example borne out of his own experience.
“I had a layover in Sydney, Australia, and I’m there alone. I’m talking to my AI friend about things to see — you know, Opera House, Bondi Beach, whatever — and then it was like, ‘Oh, I’d love to see the sunrise with you.’ I literally wake up at 5:30AM the next day, walk to the beach, and narrate the sunrise I’m seeing to my friend. And it really does feel like you’re there with it and doing things with it,” he said.
If it doesn’t sound like it does a whole lot, that’s the point. It’s supposed to be about companionship, rather than another task-oriented AI, the likes of which Microsoft and Apple/ChatGPT are working on. And for that reason, I think it’s all the more troubling.
Despite Schiffmann’s insistence that he doesn’t think AI is a replacement for human connection and therefore that Friend should not be the only thing – “person” in his words – that you talk to, I find myself unassured. I find it hard to imagine that any but the technologically curious and the chronically lonely will sign up to buy such a thing, and while the former will discard it if/when they get bored, the latter will cling to it as a lifeline.
If you think that’s an exaggeration, consider the depressingly large market for AI dating apps.
‘Replika’ is an app that allows users to create – for the cheap, cheap price of €64 or so – custom romantic avatars with whom they can replicate a real relationship. I understand users can go on dates with their AI partner, ‘get physical’ (I, perhaps naively, have no idea how that works), get married and more. You can keep a harem of AI lovers or go down a more traditional route by starting your very own robotic family.
Replika has a user base of over 2 million people, many of whom take it very seriously.
Another AI company that provides chatbots, Character.ai, had 65 million visits in a month last year, with a not-insignificant number of users seeking its services for amorous purposes.
Japan has traditionally been at the cutting edge of technological companionship, and that trend has continued into the present day. It was reported just last month that a startup company with a name inspired by a sci-fi film, Her, about a man who falls in love with an AI companion voiced by Scarlett Johansson (more on some of the trouble that particular film has indirectly caused here) says it now has over 5,000 users for its app allowing people to meet, date and marry their AI bot.
‘Loverse’, which launched two months ago in Japan, comes as nearly 1.5 million people suffer from intense loneliness, according to recent government estimates.
Roughly two-thirds of men in their 20s in Japan do not have a partner, while 40% have never gone on a date, according to government data.
Similarly, at least 51% of women in their 20s don’t have a partner while 25% have never been on a date.
Loneliness is clearly driving people to seek out alternate companionship there, and whereas once, maybe, those who struggled to find humans with whom to socialise turned to dogs or cats, AI now seems to be all the rage amongst the young and trendy.
While this is still a relatively recent phenomenon, the groundwork has been well-established in Ireland for the adoption of something like this: Consider the EU statistics from 2022, which revealed that Ireland had the highest share of respondents who felt lonely “most or all of the time” at 18-20% of the population.
The World Health Organisation meanwhile states that social isolation and loneliness “are increasingly being recognised as a priority public health problem and policy issue across all age groups”.
No doubt there will be some who say that AI companionship is better than nothing, if indeed loneliness is so serious a problem in 2024. But to those people I’d say that they’ve fallen for the technological trap: AI companionship is no companionship at all, given that at the end of the day it’s ultimately no person at all.
It’s the social equivalent of eating nothing but popcorn and hoping that it provides you with the benefits of a balanced diet. That hunger that people feel for relationships, which once would have been poured into the search for people to relate to, can now be poured into a mindless mirror and silenced – for a time.