![]() McKee concedes Replika omits one crucial aspect that services to ensure consensual interactions in other sexual roleplaying fetishes like BDSM: an active community. “When we see people becoming abusive and violent and racist towards other human beings in mediated environments, that’s not because they have engaged with a chatbot in replica, it’s just because they’re a c***.” It Takes A Village: Chatbots And Community “People who do not have mental health challenges have pretty much consistently proven themselves able to distinguish between a fantasy interaction and an interaction with a real person,” he stresses. “It is important to remember that people have been role-playing in forms of interaction that we might think of as violent for a long time,” McKee explains.īut like moral hysteria over bloody video games or slasher movies, which advocacy groups argue would lead people to emulate the violence in real life, McKee says that being abusive to your Replika doesn’t mean users will start becoming violent in real life. He says that while the reports of chatbot abuse might sound shocking, in his research it’s nothing new. Professor McKee released the book What Do We Know About the Effects of Pornography After Fifty Years of Academic Research earlier this year. “Chatbots a very interesting new wrinkle in a series of ongoing discussions about the ways in which we engage in mediated sex,” says Professor Alan McKee, a pornography expert from the University of Sydney. Replika Challenges Fifty Years Of Porn Researchĭisturbingly, not all users were having what we would normally consider consensual sex with their Replikas.Ī small group of users began bragging about creating abusive relationships for their Replika, using the chatbot’s near-limitless database library to live out violent fantasies including rape and beheading.Īs the CEO of Ethical Intelligence Olivia Gambelin warned that Replika bots ran a risk of normalising potentially harmful behaviour, suddenly another question came into focus: What was this chatbot actually teaching users about consent? A software update saw users’ digital Replikas suddenly injected with a libido, which was locked behind a paywall.Īs Replikas started flirting with their digital masters, Reddit users reported being interrupted by a prompt that forced them to purchase ‘Replika Pro’ if they wished to continue.īut while some users were excited they could finally go the extra mile with their digital friend, a worrying trend started to emerge. “We decided to put together an app called Replika, which would be an AI friend that you could talk to, with no judgement, available 24/7 for you, that will always be there and hear you out and accept you for who you are - just as Roman did to me,” Kuyda told reporters.īut how Replika functions today is a far cry from this utopian vision of digital companionship. However, after “very emotional” responses began flooding in from users, Kuyda knew that she had developed something special. ![]() In an effort to put Roman back into the world, Kuyda even released the chatbot as an iOS app. A still from Black Mirror‘s ‘Be Right Back’Ĭuriously, this is almost exactly how Eugenia Kuyda created Replika.Īfter her best friend Roman was tragically killed in a hit-and-run, Kuyda used her coding knowledge and old messages provided by friends to revive him as a chatbot.
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