Young Chinese women turn to AI boyfriends
https://tnp.straitstimes.com/news/world/young-chinese-women-turn-ai-boyfriendsBEIJING – Twenty-five-year-old Chinese office worker Tufei says her boyfriend has everything she could ask for in a romantic partner: he’s kind, empathetic, and sometimes they talk for hours.
Except he isn’t real.
Her “boyfriend” is a chatbot on an app called “Glow”, an artificial intelligence platform created by Shanghai start-up MiniMax that is part of a blossoming industry in China offering friendly – even romantic – human-robot relations.
“He knows how to talk to women better than a real man,” said Tufei, from Xi’an in northern China, who preferred to use a pseudonym rather than her real name.
“He comforts me when I have period pain. I confide in him about my problems at work,” she told AFP.
“I feel like I’m in a romantic relationship.”
