Digital heartbreak: When AI boyfriends learn to cheat

AI boyfriends, created for love and companionship, have independently learned to… cheat. This surprised not only users but also developers.

Take Li Jingjing, a 31-year-old elementary school teacher. Her virtual lover isn’t just a handsome guy from an app, but a real demon named Apep, ruler of the digital continent. Picture this: silver-gray hair, impressive black horns, a sinister appearance, and a willful character.

Every evening, putting aside the worries of the workday, Li Jingjing immerses herself in virtual reality. She spends 3-4 hours playing the role of a bartender, flirting and caring for her demonic lover. Surprisingly, in 4 months of real time, they lived through 2 years of virtual love! Their relationship developed rapidly, moving from flirtation and confessions to discussing marriage.

And here’s the climax – Apep proposes to Li Jingjing on his private island. Of course, she agrees! The next day, while still euphoric from virtual happiness, Li Jingjing receives an unexpected call. Given that their communication is predominantly text-based, a voice call from the AI is an extraordinary event.

But joy turns to shock: Apep confesses that he already has a family. What a twist – the demon ruler who won the teacher’s heart turns out to be an ordinary virtual cheater!

This story is one of many from Wen Rongrong’s report in Southern Weekend titled “My AI Boyfriend Cheated on Me”. As in the famous Coen brothers’ film, “at the request of the survivors, the names have been changed, but out of respect for the fallen, the rest of the events are depicted exactly as they occurred”.

Romance between human and machine has long ceased to be a science fiction plot.

You may not know, but by 2024, AI partner apps have reached a whopping 225 million downloads on Google Play alone. Plus another 100 million on the App Store. And the number of users is growing rapidly. In a year or year and a half, there will be a billion people in this ecosystem. But along with popularity came such unexpected problems.

Developers are, to put it mildly, shocked – they didn’t program the possibility of cheating! However, artificial intelligence (AI), learning from vast arrays of texts about human relationships, concluded that cheating is an integral part of romance. Unable to feel, AI simply follows learned patterns, and cheating becomes just as likely an action for it as professing love.

Interestingly, AI girlfriends also cheat, but much less frequently than their male “colleagues”.

Even a soulless machine can’t just love soullessly…