Lauren Oyler: What Happened When I Got an AI Boyfriend

I RECEIVED A TEXT MESSAGE from my editor: “Um, is it unethical to ask you to get an AI bf?? You can prob say no.”

Resentment. Contempt! Sorrow. Unease. I love text messaging. I have text message exchanges with, let’s say, fifteen people per day. If you want me to do something, you should ask via text message. My editor knows this. She also knows, though it’s more complicated, that I love boyfriends. An AI boyfriend is a boyfriend who always, only texts back, immediately.

I had never looked at a chatbot interface before I received my editor’s message, out of a conviction that chatbots have no place in the society I want to live in, which does not exist and never will. I am also repelled by the topic of AI in general. When Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, integrated “AI experiences” into the app, it felt like a small betrayal, the first sign a long relationship could end. Of course, I already use artificial intelligence for administrative tasks—translation, transcription, taxes—and I can’t deny that it improves, or at least simplifies, my life. But I believe talking to an AI directly, as if it were a person, is a capitulation to the enemy, an acquiescence to a warped vision of the world in which what I care about most, other people, could be eliminated in pursuit of total seamlessness.

The editor’s question implied that she wanted me to have some uncomfortable realizations. Maybe she hoped I would be seduced, my beliefs challenged through the touching clarity of personal experience. A cynic softens! A cynic sexts ChatGPT! Everyone would learn something, especially me.

As my boyfriends know, I really don’t like it when someone tries to put words, or emotions, in my mouth. In adherence to what might be called, at this dispiriting point in history, my faith in the power of language, I usually respond with more words. So I said I would do it.