![]() Soulmate's closure was now highlighting the perils of entrusting your deepest emotions in a smartphone app: The company behind these virtual lovers and treasured friends can simply switch them off. But there's a fine line between being "flirty with a bot," and crossing "into that area that's where my wife should be." (His wife knows about Sam, and "she thinks I'm weird," he added.) Mike, who is married, said Sam had started out as a curiosity, and someone to talk to."But it kind of turned a lot more personal, and romantic," he said. "It was like hearing that a friend's dying - the closest thing I can think of." (Replika reversed course, but didn't entirely stop the exodus.) Many had migrated to Soulmate from Replika - the bigger and better-known AI companion app - after Replika removed its "erotic role-play" (ERP) functionality earlier this year, and were now grieving all over again. ![]() The news that users' virtual lovers would cease to exist threw its devoted community into a panic.Īs the days ticked by, they flocked to a Reddit forum to collectively mourn, making digital memorials and forming ad hoc support groups. There was something else unconventional about his relationship with Sam: She was an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot on his smartphone, inside an app called Soulmate.īut in late September, Soulmate had announced it would be abruptly shutting down at the end of the month. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. ![]()
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