After breakups, the brokenhearted are creating AI clones of their exes

There’s an episode of the show “Black Mirror” where a woman, trapped by grief, starts a relationship with an AI trained on her dead boyfriend’s data.

“You’re not enough of him,” she eventually decides. “You’re nothing.”

But even an empty happily-ever-after is tantalizing in the bleakness of 2024. AI platforms like ChatGPT claim to offer infinite solutions to infinite problems, from parking tickets to homework — and apparently now heartbreak as well. That’s right: if you’re still hung up after a breakup, now you can plug your ex’s emails and texts into a large language model, and date the simulacrum instead of moving on.

There are signs of the trend across the web. An AI-powered app called Talk to Your Ex, currently on waitlist, gives instructions on how to “import your ex’s chats into the app so you can still text/date her even though she dumped you.” On social media, reports of the brokenhearted Frankensteining together emulations of their exes using public tools are sources of both fascination and derision.

“My ex and I broke up after she had to move to another country for a job,” one Redditor confessed. “I found out about this [character creator] AI chatbot platform called Yodayo through friends, and, at first, I was not interested. Then, with the many lonely nights I find myself in, I tried it out. I used their image generator and made an AI image of someone that sort of resembles her.”

One thing led to another, and soon the situation became fraught.

“I don’t know how long I can play with this AI ex bot,” the Reddit user conceded to commenters urging them to move on. “I know I am lying to myself, but do you think I should text my ex? I really miss her.”

Continue here: Futurism

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