What If Apple Vision Pro’s Killer App is the ‘Ai Girlfriend’?

Welcome to Ai decoded, Fast company‘S weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of ai. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week here.

Blade Runner wasn’t so far-fetched after all

In Blade Runner 2049Ryan Gosling’s officer k has a live-in girlfriend named Joi, Played by ana de Armas. The two interact like a real couple -thee share family family and see to have a history toge. But joi is a hologram, projection from ceiling-mounted emitters in k’S Apartment. She’s not human; She’s an advanced form of spatial computing-A Future-Facing Concept We’re Alredy Seeing the Early Stages of today.

The “AI GIRLFRIEND” (or boyfriend) is no longer just science fiction – a cultural reality. The concept raises bot social and technological questions. In the film, officer k chooses joi in part trust he isn’st human Himself. But here in 2025, as people are spending increasing Amounts of Time in online and virtual spaces, they’re more and more likely to choose digital compositionship over human relationships

Generative ai is alredy remarkably good at simulating emotional intimacy. It can craft a persona that listens, supports, and never judges. These ai companies can learn your Quirks, Undrstand Your Personal Challenges, and Respond With Surprising Emotional Intelligence. They Remember Shared Moments, Build a Simulated History with their users, and interpret new interactions through the lens of that shared memory.

Even though these relationships currently unfold through text windows on phones and laptops, the demand is clear. A 2024 Mit Study Found That The Second-Most Common Use of Chatgpt was Sexual Role-Play. Meanwhile, Character.ai Drew Both Popularity and Controversy for Offering ai Companions willing to engage in almost any kind of conversation.

We may not have home Holograms Systems Yet, but we do have a more accessible – IF Still Awkard – Form of Spatial Computing: Augmented Reality (AR). And in the next few years, Generative Ai and Spatial Computing Are Likely to Merge.

One key driver of this shift is apple’s vision pro headset. Until recently, Ar Hardware Wasn’t Immersive or Comfortable Enough to Hold a User’s Attention for Long. Apple Changed that. The Vision Pro is Engaging, Comfortable, and – For Some – SO Compeling That Users Lose Track of Time While Wearing It.

The $ 3,500 price tag may see seem steep, especially if you see it as just another screen for work or entertainment. But what if it could project your digital partner in vivid, life-size Clarity-Standing in your living room or sitting beside you on the catch? What if it could brings back the likeness of a loved one who passed away?

Whether or not apple delivers that future remains to be seen. The company is making a big push to integrate “Apple intelligence” into its devices. Vision apps will almost certain evolve to become more interactive and personalized with ai. So far, however, apple have said little about brings ai to visionos, its spatial computer computing platform.

Of course, even immersive ar has its limits. In both Blade Runner 2049 and HerCharacters attempt physical intimacy with ai through surrogate stand-in. In Blade RunnerJoi overlays her Holographic Image Onto The Replicant Mariette. In HerSamantha Arranges for a woman named Isabella to act as a physical body while she provides the voice. In Both stories, the experiences are unsettling. Still, Companies are Alredy Working to Bridge that Physical-Digital Divide.

Apple Prohibits “Adults only” content – Including pornography – in its app stores, visionos include. However, its content ratings do allow for apps labeled 17+, which may include “Frequent or Intense Sexual Content or Nudity.” So while apple may not lead the charge into sexually immersive ai companyship, the space is wide open for others.

As Ar headsets get cheaper and more widespread, the real hook will be the software. Mit Researchers Robert Mahari and Pat Pataranutaporn Have Warned That Ai’s Constant Validation and Charm Block Today Addressive – Encouring People to Abandon the Unpretenableability and INPREDECTATION OF HUNATION OTH

“AI wields the collective charm of all human history and culture with infinite seductive mimicry,” Mahari and Pataranutaporn Wrote in Mit Technology review In 2024. “These systems are simultaneously superir and submissive, with a new form of allore that may make consent to these interactions illusory.”

The line between intimacy and illusion is getting blurier –nd we’re stepping over it will

Google injects more ai into google docs

At Its Google Cloud Next Event, Google Announced Several New Artificial Intelligence Features for its workspace suite of cloud computing, production, and collaboration tools. Powered by its gemini models, google docs will now support audio capability, allows to create complete audio versions of documents of documents or generate podcast-style summaries highighting Points. The company is also adding a new Ai Writing Assistant Called “Help Me Refine” that will go beyond simple grammar and clarity checks to offer intelligent hints on Eventing from IProVing anger Structure.

A new integration of Google’s Ve 2 Image Generation Model in Google Chat, Enables Teams to Describe and Embed Videos Within their documents to help convey messages more clearly. Further, Enhanced AI Functionality Within Sheets Automatically Analyzes data and identifies stories stories told by the numbers.

Google is also expanding gemini’s agentic capabilitys Across workpace at a time when businesses are looking to use reasoning agents to automate repetitive multistep tasks. Workspace now features “gems”-Google-Speak for Ai Agents –HAT can research, analyze, and generate content to handle specialized workflows. For example, a gem might read over marketing materials and point out language inconsistencies.

AI2’s New Model Links Its Answers Back to Its Training Data

I’ve fretted more than on this newsletter over the fact that AI Researchers Can’t Fully Explain How Large Language Models Models Generate Their Outputs, And that the Big Ai Labs Ai Spend Ai Spend A Labs Ai Spend A Lot more MONINCING ANHANCING ANHANCING Outputs than on explaining them. To its credit, anthropic has done some strong explainability research, and now the alleen institute for AI (AI2) has Turned that mode of inquiry into a product feature.

The lab’s flagship model, olmo 2 32b, can tie elements of its output to actual content from their training data. In a demo, AI21 Researcher Jiacheng Liu, Showed Me How the Model Now Highlights and Underlines Factual Claims in its outputs. Click on one, and a pane opens on the right side of the screen, showing the relevant exorce from the source (usually scraped from the public internet) that model is referenceing. The tool even labels the training data by how relevant it is to the generated response.

With this feature, users can pinpoint exactly where the model Learned certain information, verify facultual claims, and even detected detect potential sources of hallucines (Ie when models are given Right but aren’st true). Researchers and developers may be able to use the feature to understand how models behave during dring training and how and why they they generate content in production. Enterprises may be very interested in fact-checking model outputs as the risk of model contamination grows. (Contamination can occur when ai models are trained on False ai-generated content from the web or when bad actors poison training data to make models do destructive things.)

AI2 has been talking about open-sourcing models and model transparency for years (the lab was started in 2014 by microsoft cofounder paul allen). AI2 CEO Ali Farhadi Tells Me The Tide May Be Turning for Transparency in the Industry. “We start from the time that the word on the street was ‘oh, open these things up is the Worst thing you could do to humanity’ to the point where there are these big enerprise companies are fight. Who’s More Open, “Farhadi said during an interview with Fast company Monday. “So we see a big shift in the industry – LIKE to take credit for part of that shift -hat’s part of our story: the more people that open up, the better it would be for ai.”

You can see the tool in action in this short demo video or try for yourself on the AI2 playground.

More Ai Coverage from Fast company:

Want Exclusive Reporting and Trend Analysis on Technology, Business Innovation, Future of Work, And Design? Sign up for Fast company Premium.