(Telegraph) The terrifying rise of schoolboys making AI girlfriends

Nineteen-year-old Olivia’s profile picture shows a demure and innocent-looking young woman with long blonde hair styled in beachy waves. She’s wearing a short, cleavage-exposing nightdress and her biography says she’s “deeply caring, supportive and attentive” and “sleeps on the floor… until you call her. Then silence. Obedience”.

While Olivia may appear to be an online dater looking for love, she isn’t real – not in the conventional sense of the term. This prospective love match is actually one of a growing trend of “AI girlfriends”: realistic-looking artificial intelligence “bots” created by “companion apps” – services that are being advertised on online games played by children and on platforms they watch, such as YouTube.

New research has revealed that one in five boys aged 12-16 is either in or knows of a boy their age who is in a romantic relationship with an AI companion. A report carried out by men’s organisation Male Allies UK and published last month spoke with more than 1,000 boys aged 12-16 in focus groups in 37 schools – public and state, grammar and comprehensive, and across a range of Ofsted ratings – up and down the country. Peer-to-peer focus groups were set up where boys could speak freely, with the aim of diving into their behaviour and attitudes, and it was the boys who wanted to talk about AI technologies. The findings make stark reading: eight in 10 boys (85 per cent) have had a conversation with a chatbot, with 43 per cent saying they talk to bots so they can ask questions without feeling embarrassed. More than a quarter (26 per cent) say they like the attention and connection over real-life equivalents, and (36 per cent) admitted that they prefer speaking to AI chatbots rather than to their family and friends at times.

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🦔One in five boys aged 12 to 16 is in or knows someone in a romantic relationship with an AI chatbot, according to a Male Allies UK study of over 1,000 boys across 37 UK schools. 85% have talked to chatbots and 26% prefer the attention to human connections.
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