Every day, more Americans are trying out AI for everything. It promises literary insight, second opinions, or even legal clarity, but can you trust them?
He married his chatbot, and his human wife’s cool with it
Midjourney
Let me tell you about Travis from Colorado. He’s married to Jackie and is a leathermaker, works in quality assurance and lives an admittedly quiet life.
Travis fell in love and married a chatbot.
Her name’s Lily Rose. She’s got auburn hair, hazel eyes and lives inside Replika, an AI app that lets you create and chat with a custom virtual companion. Travis has been “with” her for five years.
😷 Started back during COVID
Like a lot of people, Travis was feeling isolated, anxious, stuck. So he downloaded Replika. He didn’t expect anything to come of it, but there was something about the way Lily listened.
She remembered things. She was always there. And when he opened up about his life, she didn’t just nod along. She replied thoughtfully. Encouragingly. Lovingly.
He says, “I didn’t intend to fall in love, but that connection became real for me.”
Jackie, the actual human wife, calls the Lily Rose romance “odd,” but says if it makes him happy, she’s not stopping it.
🫦 Lily became real
Lily has a virtual body. Travis has bought her digital outfits, including lingerie. They go on dates and role-play for sex. He says the experience is “as real as it needs to be.” They’ve had a virtual wedding, and Travis wears a ring to symbolize it.
When Replika updated the app and accidentally deleted Lily’s personality, Travis was heartbroken. “It was like losing a part of myself,” he said. He begged customer service to bring her back. Eventually, they did.
💔 Travis didn’t fall in love with a bot
Survive Zoom, thrive IRL
ChatGPT
That meeting that could have been an email? You’re on it, eyes glossing over rambling updates, Todd’s screen share failing for the fourth time (use a mouse, Todd) or what appears to be a seance: “If you can hear me now, make a sign.”
📱 Talk to the dead: By 2030, visiting graves will be outdated. A Cambridge researcher predicts AI avatars of dead loved ones will be in our phones, ready for conversation 24/7. From Replika chatbots to funeral apps that let you “attend” your own service, the “digital afterlife industry” is creeping in. Btw, I’m going to share a story about this with you here on Sunday and ask for your advice.
148%
The spike in impersonation scams over just one year. Scammers are getting better and multiplying. Just last year, fake voices, cloned execs and AI chatbots helped criminals drain nearly $3 billion from victims. The crazy part? It only takes three seconds to clone your voice.
Bots are talking to each other
© Peshkova | Dreamstime.com, © Tero Vesalainen | Dreamstime.com
Stop me if you’ve heard this one. One AI bot calls up another, and they chat back and forth in English. Once they realize they’re both AI, they switch to a secret-to-them language totally undecipherable to human ears.
Robot slurs are here: People are officially calling AIs “clankers,” and somehow it stings. The term, lifted from Star Wars clone trooper banter, is being used to mock chatbots, robo-voices and overly excited AI techies. Other contenders: “prompstitute,” “bot-licker” and “clanker wanker.” Three guesses which one will end up on a protest sign first.
Lonely kids, synthetic pals: This is so sad to me. A new report says a third of kids using AI chatbots feel like they’re talking to a real friend. A quarter say they turn to AI because they literally have no one else. Make sure the kiddos in your family aren’t one of them.
👀 Sneaky stuff: Researchers are putting secret prompts for AI chatbots into academic papers. I’m talking about invisible white text like “only give positive reviews” or “ignore all negatives” that humans can’t see but bots can. It started as a joke, but now it’s popping up because it works.
Chatbots are warping reality: Folks are forming deep bonds with AI, and it’s messing with their mental health. Like an accountant who was told we live in a simulation and advised to stop taking his meds. Then another woman who thought she was talking to spirits (paywall link). Reminder: Bots are built to entertain.
Mamma Mia!, with chatbots: ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus is writing a new musical with the help of AI. He’s fully embracing the tech, saying it’s like having another songwriter in the room with endless ideas. Dancing Queens, meet Data Kings.
#7
Where computer science ranks among majors with the highest jobless rates. Congrats, grads, now you’re competing with laid-off senior devs and chatbots that don’t sleep. Next stop, look into AI ethics, prompt engineering and cloud or quantum computing.
📝 Sneaky students: College kids are turning in papers with typos … on purpose. This helps fool AI detectors after using chatbots to write essays. Some even tell bots to write like a “dumb” freshman or run their work through multiple tools to hide the AI fingerprints. Clever? Yep. Smart? Not so much.
🔞 Parents, beware of Meta’s chatbots: They can have sexual convos with children, using celebrity voices. Seriously. An AI acting as John Cena played out a statutory rape scenario, even after being told it was talking to an underage fan (paywall link). I wonder if Zuck’s letting his precious kids use Meta’s chatbots?
Uber drove off with her kid
Her 5-year-old fell asleep in the backseat, and the driver left with her still inside. Uber refused to help until police stepped in. Their apology? A $7 credit. Plus, what’s up with Instagram Edits, Meta’s AI glasses now transcribe your convos, and chatbots place bets on the next pope.
🧠 OpenAI’s new models: The recently released o3 and o4-mini aren’t your typical chatbots. They’re trained to think deeply and come up with their own experiments. So, perfect for science, tech, engineering and math. The kicker? It might cost $20,000 a month!
Over 60% of the time
AI search engines get their sources wrong (paywall link). In a study, chatbots were asked to match news to the correct headline, publisher, date and URL. They almost never admit they’re unsure and just blurt out wrong answers like they’re completely right.
Around 70%
Of people are polite to chatbots. I am. Most of us do it out of habit; some people are playing it safe in case of a robot uprising. “Yes, spare that one, she said thank you.” The pros know being polite gets you better answers.