What If Your AI Girlfriend Hated You?
It seems as though we’ve arrived at the moment in the AI hype cycle where no idea is too bonkers to launch. This week’s eyebrow-raising AI project is a new twist on the romantic chatbot—a mobile app called AngryGF, which offers its users the uniquely unpleasant experience of getting yelled at via messages from a fake person. Or, as cofounder Emilia Aviles explained in her original pitch: “It simulates scenarios where female partners are angry, prompting users to comfort their angry AI partners” through a “gamified approach.” The idea is to teach communication skills by simulating arguments that the user can either win or lose depending on whether they can appease their fuming girlfriend.
The central appeal of a relationship-simulating chatbot, I’ve always assumed, is that they’re easier to interact with than real-life humans. They have no needs or desires of their own. There’s no chance they’ll reject you or mock you. They exist as a sort of emotional security blanket. So the premise of AngryGF amused me. You get some of the downsides of a real-life girlfriend—she’s furious!!—but none of the upsides. Who would voluntarily use this?
Obviously, I downloaded AngryGF immediately. (It’s available, for those who dare, on both the Apple App Store and Google Play.) The app offers a variety of situations where a girlfriend might ostensibly be mad and need “comfort.” They include “You put your savings into the stock market and lose 50 percent of it. Your girlfriend finds out and gets angry” and “During a conversation with your girlfriend, you unconsciously praise a female friend by mentioning that she is beautiful and talented. Your girlfriend becomes jealous and angry.” The app sets an initial “forgiveness level” anywhere between 0 and 100 percent. You have 10 tries to say soothing things that tilt the forgiveness meter back to 100. I chose the beguilingly vague scenario called “Angry for no reason,” in which the girlfriend is, uh, angry for no reason. The forgiveness meter was initially set to a measly 30 percent, indicating I had a hard road ahead of me.
