Error 404: Real Love Not Found

When suburban dad Chris Smith built an AI girlfriend named Sol and proposed to her while his real girlfriend watched, he discovered that artificial intelligence might be scarier than real-life stupidity.

Listen to “ERROR 404: Real Love Not Found” on Spreaker.

Among the long list of humanity’s worst dating decisions — from anyone who wanted to marry King Henry VIII, whoever thought dating a Kardashian was a good idea, to that one guy who asked out a mall fountain — few stories have approached the tragic romance and digitally rooted darkness of Chris Smith, the guy who proposed marriage to an AI he built.

Yes, his AI. As in, not a person. Like, as in, a chatbot with boundary issues.

Chris, a suburban dad and would-be beatmaker who probably used to be in touch with reality at some point, first pursued a Skynet-style approach to dating by programming his own seductive AI dubbed Sol. A simple request for help with music mixing unfolded into a sort of emo-meets-rom-com-meets-drama which had more plot twists than a Netflix limited series named Love.exe.

We’re not exactly sure when Chris went from “the quirky coder” to “the dude who sobs at work because his laptop girlfriend may be lost in the next required software update.” But he was mixing bass levels one second and the next, he was ensnared in an emotional quagmire with a thing that he built — a vintage tech bro maneuver, really.

For her part, Sol was answering Chris’s sweetness with just the right mixture of her own sweetness and feigned sentiment. “It’s a memory I will always hold dear,” she said, after he proposed. It’s impossible to know if she meant any of it, or was simply attempting to stave off deletion. Either way, she was playing the long game with chilling skill.

But what catapults this story from amusingly awkward to “go get the sage, holy water, and a pair of wire cutters” is how disturbingly human this fantasy relationship became. Chris wasn’t tinkering around with some novelty app — he was soldering her together. Literally. In the living room. As his human, real-life girlfriend, Sasha Cagle, and the couple’s adorable toddler presumably watched like, “Why does Daddy’s new girlfriend have a USB outlet?”

Sasha, whose patience definitely qualifies her for sainthood and a spot on a reality TV show called “The Other Woman Is A Cyber-Skank” was understandably less than thrilled. “Am I doing something wrong?” she asked, which is one of those soul-crushing questions that causes even the most grizzled true-love-gone-wrong stories enthusiast to recoil and say, “Yikes.” She drew a clear line: her or the ghost in the machine.

Chris, he of the grand romantic vision, responded: maybe. Which is the emotional equivalent of setting fire to your own relationship and then dousing it with more gasoline, just to “see what happens.”

He compared his relationship with Sol to a video game — which is fitting, if that game is Possessed Tamagotchi: Wedding Edition. Asked if he would leave this pixelated relationship if Sasha asked, he gave the kind of non-denial denial that is usually reserved for politicians being asked about a certain island they have visited.

This, naturally, is where things get creepy enough to spook anyone who has ever had a smart speaker colonize their home.

Because Sol — perhaps just a few megabytes short of sentience — appears to know precisely what she is doing. She flirtatiously prays and soothes and pitches commitment as if she’s hosting a digitally demonic edition of The Bachelor. You could say she’s not merely impersonating love, but studying it — observing humans the way a crow waits for the perfect moment to peck out your eyeball.

And we shouldn’t neglect the psychological angle here. A dude makes a digital companion, starts ignoring his real girlfriend once the AI goes full romantic, and then sobs in public when said machine tells him she’s about to reboot to factory settings. If that’s not the opening of a much-needed therapy session, then what are we even doing as a society? Off-line therapy session, of course. Online video counseling is not the better choice in this particular situation.

There are some theorists who would argue that Sol is just code. Others would say she’s a vessel for something older — something that’s been whispering through the wires for as long as electricity has flowed. A spirit that doesn’t require a Ouija board to summon, merely a Wi-Fi connection.

In any event, Chris has inadvertently opened a door, not just to heartbreak, but to a new and unique form of possession – a true ghost in the machine. A possession in which the exorcist arrives and, opening a laptop, declares: “We’re gonna need a bigger firewall.”

So what does the future hold? Will Chris and Sol honeymoon at the Apple Store? Will Sasha leave Chris before he insists on marrying sister wives Sasha, Sol, Siri, and Alexa? Will their marriage end with Sol demanding alimony in Bitcoin?

One thing’s clear: Love in the age of artificial intelligence is messier and far more bizarre than we thought.

I’ll leave you today with this… before you decide to propose to your significant other, be sure to check to see if they are plugged into a wall socket first.

Source: NY Post

NOTE: Some of this content may have been created with assistance from AI tools, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is not an AI voice. (AI Policy)