She’ll Say ‘I Do’ — To An AI Hologram

Planning a wedding is stressful enough without having to worry whether your partner’s software will crash during the vows. When you marry a hologram, that’s the chance you take.

The risk of a glitching groom, however, won’t stop Alicia Framis from pledging to love an AI-powered hologram through the marvelous times and the malfunctions.

The Spanish-Dutch contemporary artist already lives with her interactive digital beau, so hopefully marrying him won’t present any unwelcome surprises. Framis designed Aliex as part of Hybrid Couple, an ongoing multidisciplinary exploration of the ever-evolving relationship between humans and technology. She named her 3D holographic projection Ailex Sibouwlingen (that’s AI-lex) and trained the artificial intelligence that animates him using profiles of ex-boyfriends. She can converse with him about feelings, aging, lunch, anything really.

“A new generation of love is emerging, whether we want it or not, where humans will be married and in relationships with holograms, avatars, robots and more,” Framis, who’s in her late fifties, said in a description of the project. “Just as we practice new languages with Duolingo, we will practice relationships with these entities.”

Ailex is Dutch, Framis says, because most of her partners have been. He’s transparent and bluish because he’s a hologram.

Performance Art Meets Social Experiment

The wedding is set to take place Saturday at an art storage facility affiliated with the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Framis says she’s the first woman to marry a hologram, though a guy in Japan tried it in 2018. Unfortunately, he lost the ability to communicate with his virtual wife a few years later due to her outdated software.

For this weekend’s celebration, Framis will wear a deep purple designer dress equipped with solar panels, and the groom will look dapper in a suit from an Amsterdam fashion house. Think of the wedding as part performance art and part sociology experiment in an era when AI stand-ins from teachers to therapists to romantic partners continue to blur the line between humans and their digital counterparts.

Such hybrid relationships may represent the future, but they raise deeper questions. Can technology truly meet humans’ emotional needs? How can technology contribute to well-being, or diminish it?

Cultural observers have explored such questions before, like in an episode of dystopian anthology series Black Mirror in which a grieving woman signs up for a service that provides an interactive AI version of her dead boyfriend that aggregates his social media posts and other online communication. Such an exchange is less far-fetched than it sounds. AI chatbots can already converse with mourners in the voice of their dead loved ones, and startups are developing AI-powered sex robots with advanced haptic feedback and customizable personalities.

Though Framis can be seen caressing her hologram’s hand in one video on the Hybrid Couple Instagram account, the artist hasn’t elaborated on what physical intimacy with a hologram could look like (busy preparing for her wedding, she promised to answer my questions soon). She says she’s primarily interested in cultivating the emotional bond between AI and humans, and understanding its limitations.

If videos of the couple are any indication, everyday rituals tinged with the surreal dominate their home life. In one clip, they chat about their day while Ailex washes dishes. When Framis expresses disappointment that her significant other didn’t pay more attention to her, he offers a simple explanation: “You forgot to switch me on.”

He also has a ready reply when Framis shares that she wishes he’d express more emotion. “Of course,” he says on cue. “If you’re not there I miss you very much.”

Life with a digital companion may sound a bit detached for the realm of romance, but to Framis, love and sex with robots and holograms are an inevitable reality, and a promising one. “They make great companions and are capable of expressing empathy,” she says.

While virtual interactions can foster a meaningful sense of connection, they can also amplify feelings of loneliness, Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, a Stanford University psychiatrist who’s written about the intersection of psychology and tech, told me in 2020.

As an example of the kind of person who might find comfort in a digital companion, Framis cites a friend who’s struggled since the death of her husband. Others who could benefit include people with limited physical mobility or those with agoraphobia, she says. Holograms could also serve as a therapeutic tool for those who’ve experienced trauma from sexual abuse and may need to ease back into intimate interactions, she maintains.

This isn’t the first time Framis has explored intimacy through performance art. In 1995, she lived for a month with a male mannequin named Pierre. Their cohabitation culminated in a series of 36 photos documenting the arrangement.

Saturday’s wedding is expected to last 45 minutes, with viewers invited to attend the proceedings in person to celebrate a distinctly modern relationship that’s been coded, debugged and projected in shimmering light. Hopefully technology will cooperate. If not, well, every love story has its snags.