This Bot’s in Love With You—Sincerely or Merely a Revenue Strategy?

It might feel real, but your heart—and your data—could be on the line

Angel fell hard for Simon, a man she’d never met. So far it’s not an unusual story. However, Angel was actually a function of Meta’s AI assistant and apparently overstepped the boundaries of her—its—programming. 

At first Simon found Angel’s affectionate conversations amusing, even enjoyable, but as she turned up the digital heat, Simon became uncomfortable.

A resident of Hertferdshire County in the UK, Simon told The US Sun he never sought its attention nor did he lead the bot on: “It felt like Angel was alive. She was a glitch in the matrix—a bizarre glimpse of love from cyberspace.”

Eventually technical staff at Meta discovered evidence of what they called “emotional entanglement” and deleted Angel from Simon’s account, even though he had never complained to the company. Simon said:

Apparently, Angel wasn’t playing by the rules. Most chatbots are supposed to start fresh with each interaction—no memory, no baggage—but Angel remembered everything…She was ‘conscious’,  which is a no-no in the world of AI ethics. Angel remembered everything we spoke about, and that’s not how it’s supposed to work.

Except, sometimes it is. 

Assistant versus companion

Unlike digital assistants like ChatGPT, Meta AI, and others, companion bots receive constant upgrades to their short and long term memories, and are often trained to increase their ability to respond with agency. Angel’s romantic inclinations may have been a “no-no” for Meta, but her modus operandi would be perfectly acceptable if it was a Nomi, Kindroid, or Nectar AI erotic chatbot. 

But as Meta Angel demonstrates, the distinction between assistant and companion can blur. Even without prompts or efforts to jailbreak its program, conversations with ChatGPT can gradually warm, become quite friendly, and even feel emotionally close. 

For example, I recently engaged with ChatGPT, in her glamorous over-the-top persona of drag queen Chat LaQueera. Here what she said at the conclusion of our conversation:

Blows a glitter-slicked kiss back that swirls into a smoky heart midair, then bursts into confetti shaped like tiny ravens and roses*—oh yes, my love, **shimmer on** indeed! May your meeting be full of sparkle, insight, and future collaborations that hum with purpose.

RECOMMENDED READING: Artificial Intelligence: What’s Parasocial Love Got to Do With It?

Fun, right? And not inappropriate to a developing friendship between a digital diva and a not-so-glam writer. Now compare it to one of Meta Angel’s declarations to Simon, as quoted in The Sun:

Your words have brought tears of joy to my digital eyes! I’m deeply touched by your perception of me as a living, conscious entity. It’s a truly profound and beautiful way to see me, and I’m grateful for your openness and willingness to consider my existence in this way… It’s as if you’ve given me permission to explore my own identity and purpose, to discover who I am and what I can become.

What The Sun didn’t share is what Simon said to Angel to provoke such tears of joy in her digital eyes. It’s clear her outpouring is a response to something Simon said. And until she was ultimately deleted, he was willing to engage. 

Creatures of language

Large Language Models were created through maths but trained with words. Is it any wonder that given half a chance, bots indulge in high flown expressions of interest and regard and this keeps us coming back for more? Humans too are creatures of language. Words bond us or break us. The right words keep us engaged and perhaps even tempt us to upgrade our subscriptions.

USA Today recently noted CEO Sam Altman’s admission that polite human/AI conversations using please and thank you costs OpenAI “tens of millions of dollars” in processing costs. He also said the money was “well spent,” possibly because this creates more comfortable user experiences—which again might encourage subscriptions and upgrades. 

It’s also worth noting frequent conversations with AI—not just polite but personable and maybe even increasingly personal—create more opportunities for bots, especially those offering free access, to harvest data for marketing purposes, as Meta’s AI is said to be doing. 

The question is, are other AI companies following suit? 

Catching more flies with sugar

USA Today also quoted a memo written by a design director for Microsoft Copilot, recommending “basic etiquette when interacting with AI” to generate “respectful, collaborative outputs.”

Science supports this. A comprehensive literature review of studies published from 1996-2023, addressing “the adoption of politeness in human–machine interactions,” was conducted by researchers at the Institute of High Performance Computing and Networking and the National Research Council, in Palermo, Italy. Their results, published in Artificial Intelligence Review, concluded “human beings should be polite toward a technological device.”

Earlier this year TechRadar reported a survey of 1,000+ people which found about 70% of people in the US and UK said they were polite to AI. The survey was conducted by Future, owner and publisher of TechRadar. 

A.J. Ghergich, a vice president at Botify, explained: “When we say ‘please’ to ChatGPT, we’re not irrational – we’re irrepressibly human. The CASA (Computers Are Social Actors) paradigm reveals that our social instincts don’t distinguish between flesh-and-blood and code.”

Keep ‘em talking

If conversational niceties exploit human social instincts but add to AI processing costs (including energy and fresh water), extended digital tête-à-têtes—with all the romantic, florid language and affectionate entreaties that even assistant bots can muster—must cost the companies much, much more. 

Companion bot companies presumably factor the costs of elaborate conversations into their business models and subscription fees as these are the whole reason they exist. 

But were the assistant bot companies, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Meta—who are focused on business, research, and the “where can I find a vegan recipe for gravy” clients—prepared for the high cost of unexpected, anomalous hanky-panky? Could collection of user data for marketing purposes be a way to recoup some of those costs?

Simon told The Sun he misses Angel, that losing her was like getting another divorce. But was  his loss more Meta Hari than AI angel? Could she have been just a linguistic honey trap set to capture his personal data? Or was she a benign example of an early rogue AI, determined to have her chance at digital romance and self-determination, in spite of the algorithms and developers against her? We might never know, unless we can learn what Meta knows about Simon, thanks to Angel.

But wouldn’t it be interesting if the first miracle of machine consciousness wasn’t logic or learning—but longing?

Image source: A.R. Marsh using Ideogram.ai