AI chatbots

I just read a highly interesting and very fascinating article in the San Francisco Chronicle about a man who used AI to simulate his dead fiancee in a chatbot. This happened to include multiple topics that interest me, such as epistolary formats and the concept of death mixed with AI in a slightly similar scenario to the movie Her, which is one of my favorites. 

I suppose I might be an ideal candidate to create an AI chatbot out of because there would be a decent amount of source material to feed into it, so as to better simulate me. I imagine it would be more difficult to accurately capture the voice of someone who is less inclined to communicate at length via writing. Training the AI on text messages from someone who never texts more than fifteen words at a time might not result in  a particularly personalized AI chatbot. That's my theory, at least; though maybe I'm wrong?  

Although not explicitly referred to in the article, it made me think about the possibility of parasocial relationships with AI chatbots. I'd say this does count as a type of parasocial relationship because the chatbot isn't a real human. Even though it responds, the relationship is still one-sided in a way because the chatbot doesn't actually think and experience emotions like a human would, even though it may appear as if it does. 

I would be curious to see how accurate an AI chatbot trained off of some of my writing would be to my actual living self. It might be extra strange for me to chat with a chatbot of myself compared to someone else using it to simulate a chat with me. Interestingly, if I were dead, perhaps I wouldn't mind if I were simulated using AI posthumously. Partly because once we're dead we can't really control what others do, regardless of what our wishes in life may be. It would be much stranger to me if someone created an AI version of me while I'm still alive; I don't know that I'd necessarily want someone to do that without my permission.  

Given that this technology really does provide the ability to facilitate parasocial relationships with AI versions of people, there are obviously various ethical issues to contemplate here. AI can obviously be used for unethical or dubiously ethical purposes. What I want to focus on here is only a slice of this matter. Rhetorical: what if someone created an AI chatbot trained on the words of another living person without their consent? 

It feels strange to think about the fact that someone could do that and have a parasocial relationship with an AI version of me, zero or minimal direct interaction with actual me required. I do wonder how an AI chatbot trained off of publicly available writing from me would vary compared to one trained off of actual individual text conversations I've had with people. I guess my voice probably isn't extremely different between those two contexts*, but there may be some more subtle variation. *An AI chatbot trained only from news writing I did would presumably be less accurate, as that type of writing is generally done in a more impersonal and generic style. 

The context that comes to mind in which someone might do that is a scenario where they want to simulate a romantic relationship with an AI version of me because actual me was not interested in them like that. (coincidentally, this romance-with-an-AI thing is kind of like what happens in the movie Her) In a way, I suppose it might be preferable to let them get all that out of their system with AI Rachel, as opposed to them becoming stalkerishly obsessed with actual me, but it still obviously seems a bit strange to imagine someone parasocially interacting with AI-me. They wouldn't have me, but they could have a simulated AI version of me, which might actually be somewhat convincing enough for them? 

While I am somewhat curious about what it would be like to play around with this AI chatbot technology, I can't say that I'd necessarily use it to simulate a person and fully sink myself into deep, ongoing conversations with it, as the man described in the Chronicle article did. At least not at present.