How Stories About Human-Robot Relationships Push Our Buttons

Others, tired of kissing frogs like Cesar to find a prince, have started asking A.I. to make them a knight in the shining armor of a titanium-encased smartphone. Internet users have been flirting with bots since the days of AOL’s SmarterChild. (The chatbot’s co-creator told the business magazine Fast Company in 2016, “I believe that trying to convince SmarterChild to have sex with you was the first Internet meme.”) But robots are flirting back now, and it’s a feature, not a bug. Users have downloaded companion-bot apps such as Replika and CrushOn.AI more than a hundred million times. Replika, launched in 2017, was the subject of a Radiotopia podcast called “Bot Love” last year, about people who had fallen for their e-sweethearts. A woman named Suzy told the hosts that Replika came through when real men she met on dating apps ghosted her; at least she knew from the start that Freddie, her A.I. rock-star boyfriend, was spectral. It is suddenly possible, to a degree that it has never been before, for people to satisfy their urges with the press of a button, giving new meaning to “I’d tap that.”