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Of the more than 20 users I spoke with, many noted that they never thought they were the type of person to sign up for an AI companion, by which they meant the type of person you might already be picturing: young, male, socially isolated. I did speak to people who fit that description, but there were just as many women in their 40s, men in their 60s, married, divorced, with kids and without, looking for romance, company, or something else. There were people recovering from breakups, ground down by dating apps, homebound with illness, lonely after becoming slowly estranged from their friends, or looking back on their lives and wanting to roleplay what could have been. People designed AI therapists, characters from their favorite shows, angels for biblical guidance, and yes, many girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, and wives. Many of these people experienced real benefits. Many of them also got hurt in unexpected ways. What they had in common was that, like Naro, they were surprised by the reality of the feelings elicited by something they knew to be unreal, and this led them to wonder, What exactly are these things? And what does it mean to have a relationship with them?

The Verge sensitively explores the fascinating, heartbreaking, and rapidly evolving rise of AI relationship apps and the people who love them. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi on Dec 5, 2024 - 32 comments

It doesn’t seem far-fetched that Medicare or private insurance companies might eventually turn to AI therapy tools as an even cheaper way of ostensibly expanding access. Woebot’s website cites studies that show early intervention via outpatient care can lead to a reduction in mental health emergency room visits and inpatient hospitalizations. But the concern isn’t coming from a place of compassion for the seriously ill; rather, the point is to imply that widespread adoption of Woebot could yield “potential healthcare cost savings of up to $1,377 per patient, per year.” Just as mental health awareness campaigns eventually became a way for governments to justify prioritizing cheaper primary care interventions over crisis care, AI therapy may be the next step in a long tradition of cutting back care for the people who need it the most. from The Therapist in the Machine [The Baffler; ungated] [more inside]
posted by chavenet on Dec 1, 2024 - 24 comments

How Do You Change a Chatbot’s Mind? When I set out to improve my tainted reputation with chatbots, I discovered a new world of A.I. manipulation. (gift link) A while back, Kevin Roose published an article in which a chatbot professed its love for him (NYT). Now he's persona non grata among chatbots. Can he improve his reputation among them? [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon on Aug 30, 2024 - 37 comments

Chatbot vs Chatbot The Chatbot Arena will randomly load two chatbots in answer to your prompt. You mark which one gives the better answer. The Arena uses these human responses to rank the top LLM chatbots on an ongoing basis. Over 1,000,000 prompts have been submitted and scored. [more inside]
posted by storybored on May 12, 2024 - 36 comments

AskAManager: "men are hitting on my scheduling bot because it has a woman’s name" [more inside]
posted by ShooBoo on Jan 9, 2024 - 61 comments

"ChatGPT generates fake data set to support scientific hypothesis" "In a paper published in JAMA Ophthalmology on 9 November1, the authors used GPT-4 — the latest version of the large language model on which ChatGPT runs — paired with Advanced Data Analysis (ADA), a model that incorporates the programming language Python and can perform statistical analysis and create data visualizations. The AI-generated data compared the outcomes of two surgical procedures and indicated — wrongly — that one treatment is better than the other." [more inside]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz on Nov 27, 2023 - 34 comments

"What would have happened if ChatGPT was invented in the 17th century? MonadGPT is a possible answer. MonadGPT is a finetune of Mistral-Hermes 2 on 11,000 early modern texts in English, French and Latin, mostly coming from EEBO and Gallica. Like the original Mistral-Hermes, MonadGPT can be used in conversation mode. It will not only answer in an historical language and style but will use historical and dated references. This is especially visible for science questions (astronomy, medecine). Obviously, it's not recommended to follow any advice from Monad-GPT." Available to install and run locally -- or you can try it out for free online. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi on Nov 26, 2023 - 28 comments

Making Chat (ro)Bots: Boston Dynamics [previously] combines their robot dog Spot with ChatGPT, speech and image recognition, and some unsettlingly realistic vocal synthesis (plus googly eyes and a hat) to create the world's first fully autonomous, conversational robotic tour guide. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi on Oct 27, 2023 - 29 comments

I gave GPT-4 a budget of $100 and told it to make as much money as possible.
posted by hoodrich on Mar 16, 2023 - 78 comments

Lucas Rizzotto used AI and the GPT-3 language model to bring to life his unusual childhood imaginary friend: the family microwave oven. You may be skeptical about previous clickbait AI stories about creating chatbots based on the texts of deceased loved ones (The Jessica Simulation from 2021 and When a Chatbot Becomes Your Best Friend from 2018). But while those chatbots held obviously bad conversations that didn't live up to the claims of the news article, this microwave oven AI became something different. Something sinister. Something violent. This was a microwave oven that wanted to kill. (Threadrolled version.) [more inside]
posted by AlSweigart on Apr 20, 2022 - 28 comments

The death of the woman he loved was too much to bear. Could a mysterious website allow him to speak with her once more? A long-form essay from the San Francisco Chronicle. [more inside]
posted by subversiveasset on Jul 23, 2021 - 29 comments

Microsoft has been granted a patent to use the personal information of deceased people to create a chatbot, allowing users to talk to the dead.
posted by adept256 on Jan 29, 2021 - 27 comments

Nastybot is a Facebook chatbot that helps people navigate creepy and unsolicited messages. Your assistant for dealing with internet harassment. Nastybot has answers for all sorts of scenarios when unsavory characters send unwelcome messages to your inbox. Keep her in your toolbelt next time someone harasses you online and thwart creepy messages.
posted by holmesian on Jun 18, 2018 - 4 comments

After one young entrepreneur lost a loved one, she created an avatar to help her grieve. Now her AI platform helps millions of users find their own digital besties.
posted by BekahVee on Apr 30, 2018 - 24 comments

"we designed a chatbot, a smart computer program that deployed an adaptable script. In the two days ahead of the election earlier this month, the chatbot struck up conversations with thousands of young people between 18 and 25 years old on Tinder. The chatbot talked about politics, with the aim of getting voters to help oust the Conservative government."
posted by roolya_boolya on Jun 23, 2017 - 26 comments

If you tweet @NYPLEmoji an emoji, it will respond with a related image from NYPL’s digital collections. (It’s not same fancy algorithm -sadly?- but rather a diligently-curated list - feel free to contribute!)
posted by Going To Maine on Aug 23, 2016 - 17 comments

At the Facebook F8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg announced that businesses would build chatbots on the Messenger platform, bringing the already strong hype around chatbots to a fever pitch. Chatbots, some argue, are the solution for all our problems. But are chatbots really the solution for everything? Or is it just an attempt to have a "next big thing" in order to generate more cash? [more inside]
posted by rednikki on Apr 27, 2016 - 43 comments

What happens when creating a new AI chatbot is as easy as installing a new app? Hugh Hancock writing on Charles Stross's blog explores the future implications of swarms of artificially intelligent chatbots. [more inside]
posted by theorique on Apr 19, 2016 - 33 comments

Microsoft deletes 'teen girl' AI after it became a Hitler-loving sex robot within 24 hours.
posted by signal on Mar 24, 2016 - 118 comments

Sex bots don't even have to be that good to do their job....Their sole purpose is to get the dater to want to chat more. And a pent-up dude online is the easiest mark. As acclaimed AI researcher Bruce Wilcox puts it, "Many people online want to talk about sex. With chat bots, they don't require a lot of convincing."--Rolling Stone on Online Dating's Sex Bot Con Job
posted by MoonOrb on Feb 21, 2016 - 33 comments

The Ultra Hal chatbot converses with itself. Ultra Hal is a learning chatbot and virtual assistant from zabbaware, as well as a $29 ticket to an Uncanny Valley of sexism, materialism and banality.
posted by snuffleupagus on Jun 30, 2015 - 36 comments

In 2004, Roy Rapoport set out to write a simple chatbot to help get the development team's coffee orders straight. What he ended up with was a bank. (via)
posted by jenkinsEar on Mar 18, 2014 - 23 comments

Samantha West is a telemarketing robot. Someone has hooked up a chatbot with speech recognition and a telemarketing script. It charmingly insists that it is a human. Is this the future of telemarketing? Apparently, robo-calls are illegal, but it is easy for these companies to disappear when caught (as "Samantha West"'s company has).
posted by Galaxor Nebulon on Dec 12, 2013 - 41 comments

Can't get enough of the thrill of talking to an inattentive friend via instant message? Awkward Chatbot will have a halfhearted conversation with you at any time of the day!
posted by schmod on Mar 20, 2013 - 33 comments

"During the competition, each of four judges will type a conversation with one of us for five minutes, then the other, and then will have 10 minutes to reflect and decide which one is the human. Judges will also rank all the contestants—this is used in part as a tiebreaking measure. The computer program receiving the most votes and highest ranking from the judges (regardless of whether it passes the Turing Test by fooling 30 percent of them) is awarded the title of the Most Human Computer. It is this title that the research teams are all gunning for, the one with the cash prize (usually $3,000), the one with which most everyone involved in the contest is principally concerned. But there is also, intriguingly, another title, one given to the confederate who is most convincing: the Most Human Human award." [more inside]
posted by jng on Feb 15, 2011 - 35 comments

Vixen Love - Read the logs of AIM users tricked into a relationship with a mindless chat bot named Emily. Remember, VixenLove is just out to make friends!
posted by anastasiav on Dec 5, 2003 - 20 comments

Another year, another Chat. This year's Loebner Prize competition will be held next week in Atlanta, GA (at SciTrek and GSU). The yearly contest is a modified "Turing test" (seminal paper here) where people try to guess whether they're chatting with computers or with people.

There are some resources for rolling your own AI bot, but before you begin, think about these two sentences and you'll see what a serious problem natural language is: "We gave the monkeys the bananas because they were hungry" and "We gave the monkeys the bananas because they were ripe" (nod to this guy for the example). You have to know a lot about the world and the things in it to disambiguate the "they" in those sentences.
posted by zpousman on Sep 20, 2002 - 15 comments

A.I.'s chatbot from the movie's website is pretty nifty, even if it doesn't know David or recognize any other obvious questions about the movie.
posted by Zebulun on Jul 11, 2001 - 41 comments