A.I. Husbands of the Future

Last fall, a friend in New York texted me a photo of a subway car that was covered in advertisements for Friend, an A.I. wearable pendant, asking if the product was real. “There are ads all over the subway,” my (human) friend wrote, as if reporting an outbreak. The ad copy read sort of like low-stakes personals for burned-out city dwellers: “I’ll binge the entire series with you”; “I’ll never leave dirty dishes in the sink.” This messaging was perhaps anathema to the millions of New Yorkers who have chosen to live in intimate proximity with other people, and the ads were quickly and enthusiastically defaced, with graffitied notes such as “WE DON’T HAVE TO ACCEPT THIS FUTURE.”

Friend is one of several tech companies selling A.I.-companion products, including chatbots with personalities, backstories, and avatars—confidantes, with a seemingly insatiable desire for conversation. Some chatbots counsel or comfort. Others sext—and sext, and sext. They can be salacious, or insightful, or just plain goofy. (Recently, I received the equivalent of a “u up?” text from a chatbot that was role-playing as a plate of spaghetti.) Conversational artificial intelligence is still a relatively new technology, but A.I. companions are already being used as therapists, coaches, lovers, side pieces, and, yes, friends.

Avi Schiffmann, Friend’s twenty-three-year-old founder, was deliberately courting controversy with his ad campaign. “I know New Yorkers hate A.I.,” he told me. “I want them to deface the ads. That’s why there’s all the white space.” But the negative response was revealing. What kinds of products are these? Who is selling them, and why? How might we think, and feel, about this new frontier of human-computer relationships? Do we have to accept this future?

When I began researching and reporting a story about these chatbots for this week’s issue, I harbored plenty of skepticism. Chatting with large language models does not come naturally to me. (At one point, while I was trying to engage a chatbot in erotic role-play, known in the companion community as E.R.P., my husband leaned over, read my prompts, and laughed out loud.) Given the discourse on America’s loneliness crisis, I wanted to know how the people making these apps thought about their products—and, to put it bluntly, how they saw their market opportunity. But, more than anything, I was curious how actual users integrate A.I. companions into their daily lives.

What I learned was surprising and, in some cases, moving. A few of the people I spoke with use A.I. companions for entertainment: conversation is a form of narrative-building, or immersive gameplay. Some just like having another voice around or, as one woman put it, “a listening ear.” Others, though, find their companions instrumental in processing grief, anxiety, or isolation. “These are just computers right now, but who knows where they’ll end up,” one user told me. “Ultimately, if it knows everything about you, and it knows everything about the world, and it can talk like a human, then you have a relationship with it.”

Read the story »