AI applications like Replika, EVA, Talkie, Botify AI, Candy AI, Nomi, Genesia, Character AI, and Kindroid allow you to create virtual friends, from scratch - appearance, personality, and what not. (Image/istock)
No matter how much you love your friends and enjoy their company, sometimes fights with them are bound to happen -- over issues that could be big or small. For instance, when they don't feed into your delusion that one day you can marry your favourite actor, or when they disagree with you on life altering things like how much water you should put while cooking instant noodles.
But did you know that artificial intelligence has a solution for this that's pretty close to perfect? No, it won't make your friend smarter. However, it can help you make a smarter friend -- AI itself.
The amusing part is that after you've fed your virtual friend information about themselves and about your life, you can more often than not carry out normal conversations with them like you do with your friends. The information you give the bot and the way you talk to it, trains it to respond better to you and speculate what you might say next to keep its answer ready.
Because everything you say is used to train the platform and then give the best response possible, your AI friend actually listens to everything you say very closely -- which, if reciprocated by you, can make for an engaging conversation on topics you might genuinely like.
You can ask them for their advice on your outfits or their opinion on your romantic life, and AI will not disappoint you (unless your sense of styling and dating choices are both trash, but that's another conversation).
If you just want to figure out your own behaviour in social settings, you can either personalise the bot with very similar interests or design an AI friend that's the complete opposite of you, and see how each of those conversations go.
However, no matter how life-like, you should also recognise that an AI friend won't be able to provide any significant help when it comes to your emotional needs. On the other hand, it would be able to address you with much more ease when you ask practical or everyday questions, like movie suggestions, the best cafe to have dinner at, etc.
And of course, it can help brush away your loneliness.
This last point, though, becomes especially important then because 1 in 4 people in the world have been reported to feel lonely, according to a 2023 Meta-Gallup survey. Having a virtual friend you know you can also speak with, who'll always listen to you, and who won't judge you (because it probably isn't trained to), then becomes someone you can slowly rely on.
In fact, Tony Prescott, professor, cognitive robotics, University of Sheffield, writes in their new book, The Psychology of Artificial Intelligence, "In an age when many people describe their lives as lonely, there may be value in having AI companionship as a form of reciprocal social interaction that is stimulating and personalised."
So, does this mean that everytime a friend disagrees with me, I'll run straight to AI to have someone solidify my (probably) incorrect beliefs? You bet!
