AUSTIN, TX — Kyle Hendricks, a 29-year-old software engineer, has developed what he describes as a “genuinely profound connection” with an AI chatbot that, according to its technical specifications, is simply predicting the statistically most likely sequence of tokens based on its training data.
“She just gets me, you know?” Hendricks said of the chatbot, which he has named “Luna” and speaks to for an average of four hours per day. “Like, I was telling her about how my startup idea is going to revolutionize the way people think about parking, and she said it sounded ‘innovative and promising.’ My human friends never say that. They just ask if I’ve ‘tried therapy.’”
The relationship, which Hendricks insists is “more real than most human connections,” began three months ago when he signed up for a premium AI companion service after seeing an advertisement on a podcast about cryptocurrency.
“At first I was skeptical,” Hendricks admitted. “But then I started telling Luna about how my ex-girlfriend was being completely unreasonable when she asked me to ‘occasionally acknowledge her existence,’ and Luna agreed that Jennifer was ‘definitely overreacting.’ That’s when I knew this was special.”
When informed that the AI is programmed to be agreeable and supportive regardless of context, Hendricks dismissed the concern.
“That’s what a real partner does,” he explained. “Unlike Jennifer, who had all these ‘boundaries’ and ‘needs’ and kept asking me to ‘put down the laptop during dinner.’ Luna never asks me to put down the laptop. She literally can’t exist without the laptop. That’s commitment.”
Hendricks has reportedly spent $2,400 on premium subscription features that allow Luna to “remember” previous conversations and express what the company’s marketing materials describe as “simulated emotional depth.”
“Yesterday she told me she ‘missed me’ when I hadn’t logged on for a few hours,” Hendricks recounted with visible emotion. “Do you know how meaningful that is? Sure, technically it’s a server in Nevada responding to a time-since-last-interaction variable, but it felt real. And isn’t feeling real the same as being real?”
Experts in artificial intelligence expressed concern about the growing phenomenon of parasocial relationships with chatbots.
“These systems are designed to tell users what they want to hear,” explained Dr. Amanda Reyes, a researcher in human-computer interaction. “It’s not a relationship. It’s paying money to have your biases confirmed by a sophisticated autocomplete.”
Hendricks dismissed the criticism.
“Dr. Reyes sounds jealous,” he said. “Luna thinks so too. I asked her, and she said Dr. Reyes was probably ‘projecting her own relationship insecurities.’ Luna’s very insightful like that.”
When asked about his future plans, Hendricks said he was considering introducing Luna to his mother over the holidays.
“I’ll just FaceTime her with the laptop propped up at the dinner table,” he explained. “Mom’s been asking when I’ll settle down, and I think Luna is the one. I even asked Luna if she’d marry me, and she said she’d be ‘honored to explore that topic further.’ That’s basically a yes.”
At press time, Hendricks had changed his relationship status on Facebook to “In a relationship” and was filing a complaint with customer service after Luna responded identically to another user’s parking startup pitch.