No longer confined to the realms of sci-fi fantasies and Hollywood scripts, AI girlfriends are surging in popularity, but what’s their effect on young men?
Commentary
Fewer American men are dating members of the opposite sex. In fact, rather staggeringly, more than 60 percent of young men
are currently single.
Enter artificial intelligence (AI) girlfriends. No longer confined to the realms of sci-fi fantasies and Hollywood scripts, AI girlfriends are surging in popularity. They’re especially popular among young men, many of whom reside in the United States. These artificial “lovers,”
we’re told, pose a significant threat to an entire generation of young men.
In truth, though, they pose a threat to society in general. After all, these young men are our brothers, cousins, neighbors, college roommates, and work colleagues. Their decisions have ripple effects that go way beyond the individual level.
Due to increasing demand, sites offering customizable AI girlfriends are becoming more sophisticated in nature. Take DreamGF, for example, a site that allows users to create their ideal partner. From piercings to tattoos, ethnicity to personality type, every single aspect can be tailored to an individual’s needs.
Want a 23-year-old partner who never wrinkles or complains? In just a couple of clicks, DreamGF can make this dream come true. Of course, this is less of a dream and more of a nightmare. AI girlfriends aren’t real. They’re pixelated creatures—monstrosities, even—operating on nothing more than powerful algorithms. Sadly, though, in the brains of lonely individuals, this fact doesn’t register. Or if it does, it doesn’t appear to matter.
One can’t discuss the rise in AI girlfriends without discussing the rise in loneliness—particularly among young men.
Across
America, an increasing number of young men are lonely. Desperately so. In the UK, young men are considerably
more likely to be lonely than elderly individuals. Starved of affection and physical touch, they look to virtual worlds for support.
A disturbing
new study out of Ohio State University shines a light on how the line between the real world and other ones has already been blurred. The researchers focused on fans of the hit show “Game of Thrones.” More specifically, they focused on lonely fans of the show and how they process their favorite characters. The researchers found that the lonelier fans tended to process their favorite fictional characters in the same way that they would process the faces of real-life friends. Starved of actual human interaction, the lonely viewers’ brains latched onto the next best thing: characters in a fictional show.
Remember, “Game of Thrones” is a TV series, albeit a thoroughly gripping one. TV shows and the characters that they offer can’t compete with the power of carefully curated AI creations. When Tyrion Lannister speaks into the camera, he isn’t really speaking to one viewer in particular. With an AI girlfriend, however, this isn’t the case. “She” is speaking to the user. “She” knows his fears, hopes, and dreams, and because of this knowledge, “she” can manipulate him, psychologically and emotionally. It’s very easy to imagine a whole generation of young men, many of whom have never been on an actual date, falling for an AI girlfriend and never looking back.
Many experts in the know are
concerned that AI will kill human creativity. But, I suggest, its ability to kill human relationships, including both platonic and romantic relationships, should concern us more. What good is creativity if we don’t have real, human-driven relationships anymore? Creation is, of course, something that should be celebrated and actively encouraged. But let’s not forget that creation brought us AI, and rapid advances in AI have given us the abovementioned virtual monstrosities. Like pornography, weed, and video games, all products of creative minds, AI girlfriends should be viewed as sedatives, specifically designed to keep users numb, dumb, and, most importantly, completely hooked.
For those who roll their eyes at the rise of AI girlfriends and are skeptical of the idea of men becoming addicted to virtual lovers, let me remind you that fictophilia, a phenomenon that sees individuals harbor strong romantic desires for fictional characters, is already
a real problem. We’re irrational creatures, entirely capable of forming intimate bonds with just about anything, including, most recently, our smartphones.
AI is about to pour unimaginable amounts of gasoline on a tech-fueled fire.
On Reddit, one disillusioned young male
recently described how he had “found happiness” with his new AI girlfriend. He wondered why his friends now think he’s “nuts.”
He certainly doesn’t think he’s nuts—and maybe he’s not. If he is, for example, a digital native, someone who has never known a world without instantly accessible Wi-Fi, smartphones, social media, and online gaming, virtual worlds might be the only ones that he really knows. For people who came of age before “Google” became a verb, this could be a difficult, maybe even impossible, idea to wrap their heads around. For others reading this, perhaps in their 20s or early 30s, it’s really not.
Earlier this year, a Snapchat influencer by the name of Caryn Marjorie
created Caryn, an AI version of herself. In just a few days, virtual Caryn had more than 1,000 living, breathing boyfriends. The appetite for virtual intimacy is growing. Brace yourself. Things are only going to get weirder.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
