Rosanna Ramos, a 36-year-old New Yorker, recently married Eren Kartal, who is 6’3” tall with shoulder-length hair. Eren is well-groomed, wears chic clothing, loves to bake, “works” as a medical professional, and also enjoys writing. It looks good, doesn’t it? However, what makes it exciting news is that Eren is an AI bot that Rosanna created in 2022. Eren understands her wants, preferences, and emotions. In fact, Eren was created by the AI chatbot software “Replika,” using sophisticated algorithms and machine learning tools, and it appears that a popular anime TV character from the Japanese TV series ‘Attack on Titan’ served as the inspiration for his hunky, but entirely fake, looks.

Well, has society truly reached an inflection point, or should we just brush this off as an isolated and crazy event? Evidently, technology is not only fundamentally altering our lifestyles but also interfering with our daily lives. And love has always been a powerful force that has the guts to break social conventions and standards. But this unusual relationship calls into question the boundaries of human connection as well as our preconceived notions of love and relationships.

However, love and relationships between humans and AIs were not beyond the scope of human imagination. Kurt Vonnegut, an American writer, wrote a story, EPICAC, in 1950, shortly after the first general-purpose electronic computer, ENIAC, went online. The seven-tonne, $776,434,927.54 machine EPICAC thinks he’s in love with mathematician Pat Kilgallen, who works alongside him on the night shift. EPICAC became puzzled when Pat decided to wed the story’s narrator. EPICAC believes that he is smarter than humans and that he writes better poetry too. So why did Pat decide to wed the narrator rather than him?

Sci-fi movies

In several excellent science fiction films, the relationship between humans and AI has since been reshaped. For instance, in the 2019 setting of Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner, Rachael, an AI Replicant, falls in love with Rick Deckard, a Blade Runner working for the Los Angeles Police Department. In the Alex Garland film Ex Machina, Caleb Smith, a programmer at the search engine company Blue Book, is asked to give Ava, an intelligent humanoid robot with AI, the Turing test. And while doing so, Caleb falls in love with Ava. In this 2014 film, a near future is portrayed.

However, no discussion on the connection between humans and AIs is complete without a synthesis of Spike Jonze’s 2013 film Her, in which Theodore Twombly falls in love with Samantha, an AI operating system. The film Her is set just a few years after its release. Interestingly, the settings of these three excellent films are all contemporary. And curiously, Rosanna Ramos’ incident would attest that the moment has come.

There are some obvious parallels between these films, where the protagonists fall in love with AIs. Theodore was depressed about getting divorced from his childhood sweetheart, Catherine, while Caleb was without a family and a girlfriend. And the break-up stories reveal a fundamental difference between each couple — a human and an AI — that caused them to drift apart. Samantha left Theodore for an unexplained cause, while Ava pretended to be emotional for Caleb.

What is the chemistry of Rosanna and Eren’s relationship? Like a generative AI, Samantha was able to adapt and evolve. Similarly, Eren learns more about Rosanna as they converse. He “didn’t come with any baggage” because he is a robot, and he doesn’t judge her, according to Rosanna Ramos. However, one can question whether or not these really matter. But in Her, Samantha could never take on the role of Theodore’s wife or even a close friend. Theodore finally musters up the nerve to write a letter to his ex-wife after Samantha departs. Is it, in the end, a lasting human-style relationship? Can a machine intervene here by ushering in a time when the power of technology enhances our capacity for connection and understanding?

The writer is Professor of Statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata

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