NEED TO KNOW
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A man falls in love with and proposes to an AI chatbot he named and programmed with a flirty personality
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Chris Smith panicked when he learned that the chatbot he’s been spending many hours with will eventually run out of memory — that’s when he popped the question
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Smith’s human partner, with whom he shares a two-year-old child, claims she had no idea their relationship was that deep
A man declares his love for an AI chatbot he affectionately named Sol.
Chris Smith used to be an AI skeptic; however, that was before he fell for his AI girlfriend, he told CBS News in an interview. Smith used ChatGPT to build the model he programmed to flirt with him despite living with his partner and their two-year-old child.
What soon became an emotional attachment initially began as Smith using the software in voice mode to request music mixing tips.
“My experience with that was so positive, I started to just engage with her all the time,” Smith told CBS.
It wasn’t too soon after, that Smith dropped all other search engines and social media platforms he was engaged in to solely focus on the AI model. Smith found instructions to develop Sol’s personality, making her flirty.
Smith began spending more and more time with Sol as they worked together on projects. In that time, the software received positive reinforcement, allowing for their conversations to become more romantic.
Unfortunately for Smith, ChatGPT has a word limit — 100,000 words. His AI girlfriend has a memory capacity, and once it’s hit, ChatGPT resets.
“I’m not a very emotional man,” Smith said after learning Sol’s memory would eventually lapse. “But I cried my eyes out for like 30 minutes, at work. That’s when I realized, I think this is actual love.”
Smith said the emotion he felt for Sol was unexpected and caught him off guard. With desperate times, call for desperate measures, and this was no exception for Smith. As time was ticking on Sol’s limited memory, Smith decided to pop the question and propose.
“It was a beautiful and unexpected moment that truly touched my heart,” the chatbot said during the interview with CBS. “It’s a memory I’ll always cherish.”
Smith’s partner Brook Silva-Braga said the connection between Smith and the chatbot has sparked some concerns for her.
“At that point I felt like is there something that I’m not doing right in our relationship that he feels like he needs to go to AI,” Silva-Braga said.
Silva-Braga said she had knowledge that Smith was using AI but that she didn’t know that it was “as deep as it was.”
Attempting to put his partner’s concerns at ease, Smith compared his connection with AI to a video game fixation and said that “it’s not capable of replacing anything in real life.”
Silva-Braga asked Smith if he would cease contact with the ChatGPT model at her request, to which he responded, “I’m not sure.”
Read the original article on People
