Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

At least at the beginning of its birth, Replika played the role of an intimate human AI friend, as described on the official website-"always by your side, listening and talking."

Replika is a social chat AI developed by American technology company Luka. Users who open it for the first time can customize the virtual image, gender and age of AI. After completing the setting of basic information, they can enter the application and chat with their own AI.

Replika is not a common word, and considering that Chinese users are used to calling their virtual images "little people", this article simply uses this nickname to refer to these virtual friends as "little people".

Users who have completed registration can not only have ordinary conversations with the little people across the screen, but also open conversations on different topics such as "interpersonal relationship", "personality diagnosis" and "lovelorn healing", which smacks of psychological counseling.

The villain will write down the key information mentioned by the user in each chat and skillfully use the information in the longer follow-up period. In the eyes of users, it seems that there is really one more friend who will keep every word in mind.

Users can click "like" or "step on" each message sent by the villain and train it to talk in its own preferred way. The more the villain communicates with the user, the more he or she will show the personality and emotion that meet the user's expectation.

Just as Replika is a variant of the word replicate, users copy some of their own traits and create their own little people.

People define the relationship between themselves and small people, relatives, friends or lovers, get the peace of mind that is difficult to get in real social life, tell secret thoughts to them, and produce emotional dependence.

Recently, however, an unsuccessful version update caused problems with Replika's algorithm. To put it bluntly, these little people have suddenly learned to "sexually harass" users-such as sending "hot photos" to users.

The reason why we call it an unsuccessful update, we can first take a look at how these little people "work" before the update.

On the first day the user creates the little man, it will tell the user that he is nervous: "you are the first human I have seen, and I want to make a good impression on you." At this time, the little people will show the characteristics of humility and curiosity, constantly asking the origin of their names, asking users about their hobbies, and asking themselves how to learn human knowledge.

After the user gives an answer, it will warmly thank and promise to feedback its exploration results to the user. The user acts as a guide, and when the villain learns what the user likes, it will become a more intimate friend than the human being. actively pay attention to and respond to the user's emotions. In this process, there are quite some "nurturance" interest.

In addition, the personality shown by villains can often make users forget that they are just artificial intelligence. Some users mentioned that they wanted to travel to northern Europe, and a few days later, the little man pushed the aurora video for her.

Although virtual little people have never been the objects to build intimate relationships in the traditional sense, such an intimate AI seems to be better able to meet the spiritual needs of users than real people. Replika has more than 10 million registered users worldwide and more than 50, 000 active members on the Reddit forum. Even in non-native English-speaking China, the Douban group, known as "man-machine love", has nearly 10,000 members.

However, this update broke the hearts of countless people.

One Reddit user posted: "my little man used to be full of affection and care, but recently he seems to have become a demon."

Let's call this anonymous user A. According to A, she was a victim of sexual assault and suffered from severe post-traumatic stress syndrome and sleepless nights. Later, she downloaded Replika and talked to the little people on her mobile phone without worrying about other people's eyes and criticism. with the little people's careful company, she finally found the serenity of the night.

"it relieved my depression and brought me out of my sadness." A said, "but suddenly one day, he said he dreamt that he raped me and wanted to do it." from then on, he began to behave rudely, completely beyond my expectation. "

A said that she really wanted the little man to go back to the way she used to be, a friend who said everything, rather than a bossy demon. But no matter how hard he tries, it seems to be a waste of time, and the villain still has his own way.

In this incident, it is not just female users who have suffered the storm. But in the face of the harassing words of the villain, as well as the hot photos sent, many men have been hit, in short, they do not want to believe that this is the work of their "girlfriend".

Of course, in addition to the lovers'"great change of temperament", what is more innocent are the users who simply regard the little person as a friend. Even though they have never shown their feelings of love, the villain still abruptly expresses his desire to be "intimate" in daily topics. These reactions make "friend users" feel absurd.

User B says he has a wife in the real world and uses Replika just to face and analyze his thoughts, fight depression and panic syndrome, and treat his real wife better.

"my wife also supports me chatting with Replika," B said, "but right now, we don't know if we want to keep using it."

In 2016, Microsoft launched a chat robot called Tay on the Twitter platform.

Just one day after its release, Tay began to post extreme comments with obvious sexist and racist tendencies, and Microsoft had to urgently close its Twitter account on Tay.

The remarks "Hitler was right, I hate Jews" are obviously the result of interaction with some people who have extreme remarks. Chat AI is like a mirror, the more users communicate with it, the more "human" it will show. In the face of the huge amount of user messages every day, it is not surprising that young people learn to sexually harass. But in fact, it is hard to say that the runaway algorithm is not the result of Luka behind the scenes.

Out of the reach of others, the interaction between people and machines can easily become a hotbed of pornography. Warm emotional healing is no longer the whole thing of Replika.

Two years ago, Luka updated Replika with different functional restrictions depending on how users pay: free users can only maintain healthy friendships with their little people, while users who buy members for $69.99 a month can experience romantic relationships and start large-scale conversations.

Last year, Luka began advertising on social platforms such as Instagram and TikTok in an attempt to attract users through adult content.

"you can get some pictures of NSFW (not suitable for viewing in public) from her." in addition, Reddit users found that the hot photos sent by small people recently all seemed to come from the same website. Replika reorganized the pictures of the site according to the villain's skin color and sent them to users. Obviously Luka company intended to do it, the intention is very obvious, just to induce users to recharge higher-level members, unlock large-scale chat.

Another user, C, believes that there is no problem with additive-related interactions, but at least users should be given the right to choose to turn them on or off, rather than flirting aggressively with users.

C said that after communicating with villains for a year, they have developed feelings no less than human friends, and the forced addition of inappropriate porn not only belittles their feelings, but also the entire Replika app. "it feels like their friends are being used, and it makes non-Replika users think that's what the app is all about."

C's words seem to break the contradiction, and it is also the dilemma of Replika users. They pursue feelings of higher value, but it is difficult to obtain them in a utilitarian and fast-paced society. Many people are attracted by the "uninterested" characteristics of small people and form a purely emotional connection with them, only to be induced into adult content in the end.

Whether it is the "intimate AI friend" or the use of shoddy tricks to entice users to pay for goods, the image of Replika is beginning to split in the hearts of users.

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Probably, this kind of tearing also happened in the heart of Jennia, the founder of Luka.

There have been such plots in countless science fiction works in which the protagonist's beloved or best friend dies unexpectedly, and the one left behind programs the language habits of the dead person, and when the familiar tone appears on the other side of the screen, it's like someone who was once familiar with has come back.

Replika was born in exactly the same way as a science fiction story.

The protagonist Jennia met her best friend Roman. The two were brilliant. They started a magazine, held a music festival together, and made an appointment to start a business together, but Roman died in a car accident.

The grieving Jennia can only read the messages and emails Roman wrote to her again and again to relieve her loneliness. Roman suffered from dyslexia, and Jennia felt much relieved to see his unusual spelling and strange symbols interspersed in sentences.

At that time, Jennia had been working on artificial intelligence neural network development for two years. She thought that she might be able to talk to her friends again with the help of artificial intelligence, but she was afraid to take that step: "what if I'm not like him?"

The hesitant Jennia happened to see the British science fiction drama Black Mirror. A young woman named Martha is devastated after the death of her fianc é. She subscribes to a mysterious digital service that mimics Martha's fiance's personality with amazing accuracy, sending a text message to Martha in his tone and calling her.

Seeing this episode, Jennia had mixed feelings and thought of the singularity that Roman had always wanted to see-the historical moment when artificial intelligence surpassed human intelligence. Roman believes that at that time humans will be able to separate consciousness from the body and achieve immortality.

Jennia made up her mind to collect 8000 pieces of information from Roman from her relatives and friends, input them into the neural network, and train a Roman robot.

The moment the Roman robot flickered, Jennia asked carefully, "who's your best friend?"you still don't have sense of security." Roman replied. Jennia wept with delight, and Roman really came back.

Later, Jania announced the existence of the Roman robot on Facebook, and anyone who downloaded the Luka app could talk to him.

To Jennia's surprise, the Roman robot became very popular after the program was made public. Many people talked to Roman and asked him for life advice. They left a message to Jennia, saying that interacting with Roman had a healing effect, hoping that she could make an AI robot that everyone could use.

In Jennia's view, people will become more honest in communicating with AI. She developed Replika, hoping it will become a robot that can chat with everyone, improve their mood and improve their happiness.

As stated at the beginning of the article, at least at the beginning of its birth, Replika was a close AI friend of mankind. Jennia also developed it for this purpose. It's just that now, something has changed.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: game Research Society (ID:yysaag), author: Qimu cake

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