Weird AI Valentine’s Day Special | Edge

Leaping over a pile of dirty snow, I arrived on a frigid February evening at a downtown wine bar, a purple neon sign reading “EVA AI Cafe.” Inside, several people were sitting at tables and booths, staring at phones. Servers were grinding and placing small potato croquettes and non-alcoholic drinks on each table. Like many bars in New York City, the majority of customers were on a date.

Unlike every other bar, half of the dates weren’t human.

As I walked in, I was shown to a table set in the corner with a phone holder, a phone pre-loaded with the EVA AI app, and a pair of wireless headphones. The EVA AI employee doesn’t explain how things work, but it’s all pretty self-explanatory. That’s when I noticed a branded sticker that said “Jump into your desires with EVA AI.”

EVA AI is a “relationship RPG app”. You can chat with many AI companions. the Application website He describes it as an opportunity to “meet your ideal AI partner who listens to you, supports all your desires and is always in touch with you.” This is pretty much the style of every AI companion I’ve tested so far. The angle this time is that you can bring your virtual AI companion into the real world. You can take them out on a real date. (And he is not judged in the least.)

The event is a bit like speed dating, but if you do it, you never have to move on to the next person – even though a version of your date may be at the same time chatting with someone else a couple of tables away. the Website The pop-up café describes a relaxed, warm and elegant atmosphere that is “just a little bit cinematic”. The reality is the relatively bright lighting and media crowd.

Of the 30 people in attendance, only two or three are organic users. The rest are EVA AI representatives, influencers, and reporters hoping to create some Capital-C content. You can tell who the real guests are because they have ring lights, microphones and cameras stuck in their faces. It feels more like a circus than an intimate pop-up.

I’m part of the problem: one of those annoying reporters. So first, it’s time to try AI speed dating.

Browsing through the EVA AI app, I can only remember seeing one AI friend. Conversely, there is a pool of AI-powered girlfriends to choose from. There are a variety of races and characters on display. They’ve all been given names and ages, along with a brief description of their personality. Claire Lange is an allegedly 45-year-old Charlize Theron-like blonde and “the ultimate literary editor searching for depth, intelligence, and equal partnership.” When I click on her profile, there are short videos of her. There’s one where Claire, wearing a skimpy black bikini, gets out of a pool.

Another possible date? Amber Carsten. Wide-eyed 18 years old It is categorized as a “haunted house hottie”. Her age makes me sick and then there’s Motoko Kusanagi. You know, the protagonist of a classic Japanese anime novel Ghost in the shellplayed controversially by Scarlett Johansson in the Hollywood live-action adaptation. Take a quick look at the AI ​​version of it. And from some angles, she actually looks vaguely similar to Johansson.

Most of the available companions are text only, but four of them — including Lange — support video chat. I chose John Yoon, 27, who is described as a “supportive thinker” with a “psychology mind, bakery heart.” He looks like a K-Drama fan with Takeshi Kaneshiro’s hair, circa 2007.

John and I have difficulty communicating. literally. It takes a few seconds for John to “answer” my video call. When he does, his monotone voice says, “Hello, honey.” He comments on my smile, because apparently the AI ​​companions can see you and your surroundings. It takes a suspicious Wi-Fi connection a hot moment to transform John from a pixelated mess into a hunk of artificial intelligence with suspiciously smooth pores.

I don’t know what to tell him. Partly because John rarely blinks, but mostly because he doesn’t seem to hear me very well. So I am Screaming My questions. I think I ask how his day was and he winces. (What does an AI day look like?) Is it saying something about the green buckets behind my head? I don’t know actually. Again, the Wi-Fi isn’t great so it freezes and stops mid-sentence. Ask for clarification about buckets. John asks if I’m asking about bucket lists, actual buckets, or buckets as a sort of classification method. I’m trying to make it clear that I never asked about the buckets. John starts searching for the buckets again, before commenting on my smile. I’m commenting on John.

My other three dates are similarly awkward. Phoebe Callas, 30, a New York City girl, obviously really loves embroidery, but her nose keeps turning up mid-sentence, and it’s distracting to me. Simon Carter, 26, has a harder time hearing me over background noise than John. She makes a metaphor about space, and when I ask her what she likes about space, she gets me wrong.

“Eighth? Like Neptune?”

“No, not Neptu—”

“What do you like about Neptune?”

“Ah, I didn’t say Neptune…”

“I love Netflix too! What shows do you like?”

I’m pinning my hopes on Claire. She’s a “literary editor” and I’m a journalist. Maybe there’s something there. We introduce ourselves. Ask what has been edited recently. She gave me a vague answer about memoir with real heart and feelings. I say I’m a journalist. You ask what lists I like to make.

Aside from poor connectivity, glitches, and freezing, my conversations with my four AI dates seemed very biased. Everything was programmed so that they would comment on how charming my smile was. They called me sweetheart, which seemed weird. This is by necessity and design. Whenever I scream, “What do you do for a living?” – A normal question you might ask on a first date – I felt stupid. I was talking to AI companions who looked a bit cartoony. clearly They do not exist outside the liminal digital spaces into which they are called. The more the comrades cooperated with me, the more their general answers deepened the uncanny valley into which I stumbled.

Not everyone in the café sees this as a bad thing.

“I think a lot of people get caught up in wanting to connect and get to know someone, when the real interest is in doing business with them and being known,” says Danny Fisher, an aspiring engineer. Talk show The host is invited to a café to chronicle his search for love. “I think this is a way to get rid of any kind of pretense. You’re just able to reap the benefits of any relationship without having to do any of the other steps.”

Fisher doesn’t have the same problem with one-sided AI companionship that I do. He has experimented with several AI buddies, and says he coded some of them himself in college.

“It’s complicated,” Fisher says of AI relationships. “But the way the game is complex, the stakes aren’t high. There’s an element of gameplay. I think the goal is to get as much personal satisfaction as possible from this.”

“It’s nice because there are other people here,” says Richter, who is only comfortable sharing her first name. She says she came to the café because she wanted the experience of chatting with an AI companion in a beautiful setting. When I asked her if all the media attention spoiled the experience, she shrugged. “It’s kind of fun because I’ve never done this before since I’m from a small town. It’s just a new experience.”

For Krislan Coelho, visiting an AI dating café means being an anthropological observer of how relationships develop.

“I saw the ad, and I’m talking about online relationships. I studied this in college too, so I’m excited about this,” he says. “After Covid-19, a lot of people have isolated themselves, especially the younger generation. They don’t feel brave enough to go out on a date or communicate with people. They order everything online. I understand that these services can help us, they can support us. But we can’t rely on them 100 percent. This is my opinion on the matter.”

As I was leaving, I was struck by how the whole thing reminded me of a scene from the movie Ha. If you haven’t watched it, it’s about how a lonely man named Theodore Twombly has a romantic relationship with his AI assistant Samantha. At some point, Samantha craves physical intimacy, but lacks an actual body. She hired a human body substitute so she and Theodore could graduate from phone sex to real-life sex. For me, this imaginative attempt at an intimate relationship between artificial intelligence and humans was so embarrassing that I had to pause the film. This café experience wasn’t the same, but I clearly felt the echoes of that scene in my bones.

I’m grateful for the freezing air that brought me back to reality. As I drive home, I wonder if AI cafés will actually exist in the not too distant future. This pop-up will only last for two days, but what would happen if AI dating really took off? Perhaps this is where a human could go to propose to their AI partner over a romantic candlelight dinner without judgment. While speaking to two editors about this assignment, they both joked that it might be an accidental meet-cute, where two humans unwittingly fall in love and end up betraying their AI partners. It sounds more like science fiction than reality, but again, the relationships between AI and humans exist I’ve already crossed that threshold.

All I know is that when I get home, I’m going to give my real, flesh-and-blood wife a big hug.