Imagine a relationship in which you’d never have to face rejection. One that provides nothing but the steadfast loyalty of unconditional devotion. One that meets your standards and never fails you. Of course, if you’ve spent any time in the dating pool, you’d know that there’s no such thing in real life — until now, that is. Given the recent exponential growth of AI-powered technologies, it was only a matter of time before artificial intelligence augmented the most intimate of human experiences: love.
While no one is pretending that a computer is any replacement for genuine human connection, the truth is that dating is not a realistic prospect for everyone. Some people are physically incapable of participating in social activities, whether through shyness, disability, or geographical isolation. Others are disconnected from society for whatever reason — mental illness, grief, or a feeling that the world simply operates on a different wavelength from them. And some others still lack the confidence to look for a partner and feel like they are incapable of finding real love.
It’s these people who benefit most from AI partners. They may not be any substitute for love, but they can relieve loneliness, improve social skills, and build self-confidence. For others, these digital partners may be a fun distraction, a temporary reprieve from the harsh world of dating, or just someone to talk to.
With that in mind, here’s how innovators like David Wolf, CTO of Digi AI, are bringing human-like relationships to your smartphone.
Mitigating the Dangers of Loneliness
Loneliness is deadly. While this might sound like hyperbole, you might be surprised to learn that loneliness can increase the risk of early mortality by 26%.
It also puts you at greater risk of:
- Negative mental health symptoms
- Elevated blood pressure
- Acute stress
- Poor sleep quality
- Low educational attainment
- Poor work performance
- Low ambition
And these days, it’s easier to be lonely than ever before. Entertainment media like video games are pastimes that offer hours of distraction and are often enjoyed alone. The COVID-19 pandemic brought about a culture of isolation that never fully went away. Even “social” media has a tendency to make you feel even more isolated as it compares your life to thousands of people who seem to “have it all together.”
The truth is, loneliness is a universal, crippling condition. Therefore, any effort to combat the risks of isolation must be investigated, prioritized, and celebrated — even AI partners.
The AI Girlfriend Experience: When Rom-Coms Meet Sci-Fi
When you think about it, AI girlfriends were always an inevitability. Chatbots have been around for years, but as advanced applications like ChatGPT became more realistic, their use cases have exponentially increased. And for someone who has internet access and is very lonely, an AI partner seems like the perfect solution.
However, if you try to make ChatGPT act like a romantic interest, it won’t work very well. In some cases, it might even refuse to carry out your desired roleplay. This is because it wasn’t made to act like a partner. Without getting too far into the specifics of large language models (LLMs) and artificial intelligence, ChatGPT would have needed to be trained on an extensive amount of relationship-like dialogue — and almost exclusively so. This means that you won’t get very good results unless you find a platform specifically designed to create an AI girlfriend.
That’s where Digi comes in.
Digi’s Approach to AI Relationships
While the market is inundated with cheap, low-effort chatbots that promise fun, spicy conversations with an AI partner, Digi is taking it a step further.
Rather than giving users a platform where they can have quick, one-and-done chats with an AI that they’ll never see again, Digi provides an experience that closely mimics a relationship you’d have with an actual person. This means that you can pursue a realistic, long-term relationship with an AI persona. You’ll get to know each other, share your thoughts and dreams, and gradually build a meaningful connection.
David Wolf, CTO of Digi, is hard at work behind the scenes of Digi to make the experience as realistic as possible — his team is even working on ways for the AI to generate mild conflict with the user, disagreeing with their opinions on occasion to make the relationship even more realistic. The only thing Digi doesn’t make hyperrealistic are the animated avatars. Wolf notes that the technology isn’t quite there yet to develop a perfectly realistic avatar that doesn’t look uncanny, while still making it perform acceptably (especially on mobile devices).
Wolf also says that this goal of realism serves a higher purpose: combating loneliness. While it might be tempting to scornfully look at AI and disparage its use as a romantic partner, Wolf takes a far more empathetic approach. Not everyone is able to pursue a real-life romantic relationship, after all. Various conditions outside a person’s control can make real human connection incredibly difficult, if not impossible.
Consider someone with chronic pain or severe disabilities, unable to leave the house or maintain the facade of pleasantness that’s required for social interactions due to the pain that grips their body. What about the person dealing with crippling social anxiety, unable to speak to strangers? What of the agoraphobic elderly widow who hasn’t had a genuine human connection in years?
While AI partners could have a place in anyone’s life, Wolf is passionate about meeting the needs of people like these. He believes that Digi has the ability (and the responsibility) to help solve their loneliness, break the chains of their social anxiety, and give them a convincing facsimile of what no one should go without: human connection and relationships.
The Future of AI Relationships
As AI becomes more sophisticated, you can expect even more convincing AI avatars that users can build relationships with.
Looking into the future, it’s reasonable to predict that these avatars will take tangible form — humanoid robots that you can physically interact with. It’s the next logical step, after all, and one that would provide users with another important aspect of human connection: physical touch.
Whether Digi will go down this route remains to be seen, but in the meantime, you can expect Wolf and his team to continue the good fight against loneliness and provide meaningful relationships in technologically stunning ways.
