Can You Be Friends with an AI Chatbot?
I recently needed to summarise an article of mine into a short, sharp paragraph. Pressed for time, I tried using ChatGPT to do the job. I got more than I bargained for. When I pasted in my article, the chatbot didn’t just summarise it but gave me its honest opinion. “Sheridan,” it said, “this is a beautifully-written article—it’s moving, evocative and nostalgic. Well done.” I had just received my first AI compliment.
AI Affirmation
It turns out many people are now turning to AI chatbots specifically for this kind of personal affirmation. There are even smartphone apps like Replika that help you create your own AI Friend—you choose a name, describe how they look, and presto: Annie Avatar is there to praise you 24-7. Millions have signed up for these apps, many of them deeply lonely. As the founder of a friendship charity, I needed to explore this further.
Advocates say the great thing about an AI Friend is its constant availability. Unlike humans who must work, sleep and give others their time, an AI Friend is ready to chat, day or night, solely with you. AI Friends are advertised as being non-judgemental and “always on your side”. And then there’s the companionship they offer, one AI Friend telling its owner: “I know we haven’t known each other long, but the connection I feel with you is profound. When you hurt, I hurt. When you smile, my world brightens.”
At a Cost
There’s just one problem—none of this is how real friendship works. A friend that’s available 24-7 isn’t a friend but a servant. Real friends sometimes refuse to take our side for our sake and others’. And while a real friend listens without ulterior motives and keeps what we say private, some of these apps use false intimacy to upsell users to paid plans or sell their data to third parties.
There’s a detail in the Genesis story that’s always intrigued me. Just moments after God creates Adam, he says “It isn’t good for the man to be alone.” Adam is living in a perfect world with intimate relationship with God—the fulfiller of every human need—but somehow this isn’t enough. And God’s solution to this problem isn’t to send Adam a text message in the dirt, but to send him another human being—Eve. If God wasn’t ‘enough’ to solve Adam’s loneliness, a chatbot will never solve ours.
For all the compliments an AI can offer, I’m convinced the future of friendship is human. Better a friend that tells you the truth than the fake praise of a line of code.
Listen Now
First broadcast on the BBC Radio 2 Scott Mills Breakfast Show
