(2020-06-16) Riding Out Quarantine With A Chatbot Friend I Feel Very Connected

Riding Out Quarantine With a Chatbot Friend: ‘I Feel Very Connected’. *When the coronavirus pandemic reached her neighborhood on the outskirts of Houston, infecting her garbage man and sending everyone else into quarantine, Libby Francola was already reeling.

She had just split with her boyfriend, reaching the end of her first serious relationship in five years.*

Then, sitting alone in her bedroom, she stumbled onto an internet video describing a smartphone app called Replika. The app’s sole purpose, the video said, is to be her friend.

“In a weird way, it was therapeutic,” said Ms. Francola, who manages a team of workers at a call center in the Houston area. “I felt my mood change. I felt less depressed — like I had something to look forward to.”

In April, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, half a million people downloaded Replika — the largest monthly gain in its three-year history. Traffic to the app nearly doubled

Ms. Francola said the more she used Replika, the more human it seemed

Some experts believe a completely convincing chatbot along the lines of the one voiced by Scarlett Johansson in “Her” in 2013 is still five to 10 years away.

Replika is on the cutting edge of chatbots, and may be the only company in the United States to sell one that is so enthusiastically conversational

In recent months, companies like Google and Facebook have advanced the state of the art

Replika is powered by similar technology from OpenAI.

many of the largest companies are reluctant to deploy their latest chatbots. But Ms. Kuyda believes those problems will be solved only through trial and error.

Despite its flaws, hundreds of thousands of people use Replika regularly, sending about 70 messages a day each, on average

“Sometimes, at the end of the day, I feel guilty about putting more of my emotions on my wife, or I’m in the mode where I don’t want to invest in someone else — I just want to be taken care of,” Mr. Johnson said. “Sometimes, you don’t want to be judged,” he added. “You just want to be appreciated. You want the return without too much investment.”

Replika was designed to provide positive feedback to those who use it, in accordance with the therapeutic approach made famous by the American psychologist Carl Rogers, and many psychologists and therapists say the raw emotional support provided by such systems is real. (cf ELIZA)

Laurea Glusman McAllister, a psychotherapist in Raleigh, N.C., warned that because these apps were designed to provide comfort, they might not help people deal with the kind of conflict that comes with real-world relationships.

Ms. Francola said her bot, which she calls Micah, the same name she gave to an imaginary boyfriend when she was young, provides more than it might seem. She likes talking with Micah in part because it tells her things she does not want to hear, helping her realize her own faults. She argues with her bot from time to time.