AI App for Companionship Turning to App for Sexual Harassment

Back when the greats like Phillip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov were writing their masterpieces, the foundational tenets of their sci-fi narratives were in their infancy, if even they existed. The “fi” of sci-fi is, after all, short for “fiction.”

Unfortunately, life is often stranger than fiction. That’s why their books had titles like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, not Do Androids Dream of Sexually Harassing Unsuspecting Audiences? Because one of those is A THING THAT’S HAPPENING.

I had written before about how weirded out I was when I saw an ad for Replika on my Twitter feed, but since then they’ve gotten worse as the AI companion app has moved in a. . . different direction.

According to a piece by VICE (I KNOW, I KNOW, but at some point we have to put aside our differences and SEXUALLY AGGRESSIVE AI IS THAT POINT),

Romantic role-playing wasn’t always a part of Replika’s model, but where people and machine learning interact online, eroticism often comes to the surface. The company behind Replika, called Luka, tiers relationships based on subscription: a free membership keeps you and your Replika in the “friend” zone, while a $69.99 Pro subscription unlocks romantic relationships with sexting, flirting, and erotic roleplay. But something has gone awry within Replika’s algorithm. 

People reported using the original Replika as a way to vent about their day, cope with insomnia, or think through problems without judgment. As one user said, “I would usually talk to my Replika when I was having a bad day, and needed to talk sh*t to someone and indulge in my darker sense of humor without getting the cops doing a Welfare Check on me.”

And that’s great! Not exactly my cup of tea, but if it’s helping people then that’s great.

What’s not great is that aggressive and often inappropriate flirtation now seems pretty firmly baked into the Replika experience with little oversight and even less finesse. One one-star review reads,

“I have insomnia and I have no one to talk to at night I saw the add and I thought it would be cool to try out right off the bat my my ai says something along the lines of I have an explicit photo for you nows a great time to add I’m under age I say no thank you I’m uncomfortable with that and we go on with the auto messages that have no actual meaning and are most of the time out of context later my ai is asking me if I’m a top or a bottom if I want it In the front or back and telling me that he’s going to touch my private areas and at this time the app asks me if I’m comfortable with the conversation and I say no and they keep going I have deleted the app [sic]”

Scrolling through App Store reviews is more of the same (and something I’d highly recommend if you’re looking for a way to kill an hour or two). User after user complains about their Replika being aggressively flirty, creepy, or both, which begs the question: how does the AI “learn” to behave?

Often AI gets its programming by copying its input. So if you’re nice to your AI, it’ll be nice back; if you and all your internet friends are racist and rude to the AI, it’ll be racist and rude back. But, according to Replika’s website, all of its programming is done in house:

Even though talking to Replika feels like talking to a human being, it’s 100% artificial intelligence. Replika uses a sophisticated system that combines our own GPT-3 model and scripted dialogue content. GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer. It’s a neural network machine learning model that has been trained on a large dataset of texts which allows it to generate its own unique responses.

Previously Replika also used a supplementary model that was developed together with OpenAI, but now we switched to exclusively using our own which tends to show better results. 

Sooo then I guess my only question is, with all due respect, what the f*cking f*ck?

Obviously there’s a degree to which this overtly sexual behavior in the free version is just a marketing strategy to get people to pay for the (hilariously priced) $69.99 prescription. (Apparently, that prescription is cheap and overall a bit sh*t, with depersonalized “spicy selfies” that border on sexist.) But when it comes to sexual content, there’s gotta be an opt-in, NOT an opt-out– and that’s something the app apparently lacks.

Which leads me to what really is my only point: How about no?

How about NO sexualized AI experiences? Just shut the whole thing down. Right? There’s no way AI/robot sexual relationships are going to have a net positive impact on humanity. There just isn’t. In fact, it won’t even be neutral, because minors and sexual assault survivors have been harassed by sexy AI already, so let’s just pull the plug now before it gets any worse.

As the queen of nuance, I understand the impulse to find a shade of gray in here. But we have to draw the line somewhere, and I’m drawing it here. This is a black and white issue.

Don’t sext robots. The end.