Brutkey

Cory Doctorow
@pluralistic@mamot.fr

Garbage Ryan with a characteristically Very Good Take.

https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-ai-boyfriend-ticking-time-bomb-a404028a5c2de843

Incidentally, none of this is new. There have always been people who fall in love with fictional characters and inanimate objects. And the internet has only made it easier for these people to find each other and commiserate over the problems this creates. And as technology has made it easier for these people to “communicate” — or at least have some passing simulacrum of communication — with these characters, it has made those people even more dependent on corporations to continue supporting that tech. A few years ago, a Japanese man named Akihiko Kondo “married” a hologram of the vocaloid pop star Hatsune Miku. He told Japanese media that he was depressed and lonely and his “relationship” with Miku helped him recover. A story you’ll see over and over again in subreddits for people dating ChatGPT. And just like those users this weekend, Kondo lost the ability to interact with the hologram of his cartoon wife when the projector he was using to view her, run by a company called Gatebox, became obsolete.