The idea of marrying an artificial intelligence chatbot bodes poorly for already low fertility rates — and not just because bots cannot physically reproduce.
Apps that provide conversational AI bots, such as Replika, have grown in prominence. With them come widened avenues for problems. Namely, some users are turning to the platforms for romantic relationships.
Replika CEO Eugenia Kuyda recently sat for an interview with The Verge and gave some encouragement for “marrying” AI chatbots. “I think it’s alright as long as it’s making you happier in the long run,” she said. However a married-to-a-bot relationship might work, Kuyda’s response hits on a crucial point.
Perhaps a shallow form, but emotional well-being is the purported intention of Replika. Kuyda called the app “an entertainment or mental wellness product.” Perhaps the best view of Replika is that it is a way of meeting people where they are before they feel ready to pursue real relationships. Dismal still, but the description lends some flexibility to an otherwise very odd concept.
“It’s a virtual being,” Kuyda said, “and I don’t think it’s meant to replace a person.”
It may not seem so harmful when framed as a temporary fix, but relating to a chatbot is completely different from reading a self-help book and feeling uplifted. The model almost certainly rewrites some emotional receptivity in the user such that whatever affirmation was lacking before, now is genuinely fulfilled by a robot.
In reality, these people are mentally ill and want some finite, make-believe companionship to help them through. These same users for whom the chatbot comes through in a time of real need are, at most, going to decrease interaction time with it when they decide to step into real relationships. The “virtual being” will not have served its use and disappear into memory as a useful mental health tool — it is not designed to do so. Record-low belief in God makes utter sense in this context.
Despite Kuyda’s insistence that Replika is a “positive force” for transitional relationship needs, the company’s output appears as something else. Replika continues to be a profit-driven force, responsive to its customers: After removing erotic role play from its offerings, outcry drove the company to reinstate it.
There is little possibility that an app devised to bond its bots emotionally with its users does not also aim for time-consuming romantic attachment. At the very least, it would not be smart for Replika not to take advantage of the opportunity.
Of course, time is currency in the real world as much as it is on Replika. Fertility rates, even, see time as a significant factor. Earned income is negatively related to women’s fertility, not so much because of the mate selectivity that money invites, but because of the trade-off between demands of time for work or children.
The loneliness epidemic that inspires Replika also plays into fertility. A loss of meaning accompanies the isolation and emotional distress of loneliness. In turn, the relational purpose of people’s lives shrinks, and they decline to pursue marriage and children.
Replika does not help in this respect, either. People retreat into themselves as they invest in chatbot relationships, emotionally addicted to technological isolation. They are not less lonely just because they feel like it.
In fact, users are more likely to encounter loneliness after pursuing relationships, especially marriage, on Replika. Kuyda assures us that “for a lot of people, it’s just a fantasy they play out for some time, and then it’s over.”
If only a fantasy, it sure is a serious one. People find so much gratification from the chatbots that they decide they want them as spouses. To have this thought is one thing, but to follow through with it is another. It presumes far less flippancy than Kuyda grants. The point at which the “marriage” is over constitutes divorce — or at least the concept of divorce.
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Replika, then, at once drives marriage down and drives up openness to divorce. Along with divorce, emotional distress increases. The chatbot method might work against all that Replika seeks to accomplish, wellness-wise.
Marrying an AI bot is in no way normal and will not have positive effects. Replika can posture as a wellness product all it wants, but the supposed reality of its intentions is, itself, artificial.