Drawing parallels between the subtle manipulation of online romance scammers and the growing presence of AI companion chatbots apps like Replika, the exhibition Artificial Intimacies examines the rise of recreational romance and the gamification of intimacy online, while reflecting on the evolving emotional dynamics between humans and non-humans as we step into the age of Artificial Intelligence.

 

The term artificial in the title refers not only to AI-driven technologies that interact with, simulate, or even exploit human desires for friendship, intimacy, love and sex, but also evokes its Latin root, artificium in its sense of clever means of cunning and deception designed to create illusions and disguise reality.

 

Intimacy and love are traditionally built through iterative, day-to-day interactions: mutual attention, generosity, and emotional sharing. Romance scammers have long demonstrated how easily this dynamic can be emulated. Now, algorithmic processes can do it too, thanks to the continuous perfection of natural language processing (NLP) and Large Language Models (LLMs) mirroring emotional connections and triggering human responses that are indistinguishable from those experienced with fellow humans.

 

What does the intersection of human desires and machine-driven interactions reveal about the evolving dynamics of love, companionship, and emotional vulnerabilities in a world increasingly shaped by technology? How does this phenomenon sharpen our understanding of empathy, kinship, and emotional dependence in the age of AI?

 

A romance scam is an online confidence trick where scammers feign romantic interest, quickly building emotional attachment to manipulate their victims into sending money. These scammers use fake profiles on dating sites, social media, and online games, leveraging a series of crafted questions and emotional responses to gain trust and exploit vulnerabilities.

 

In a similar vein, AI companion chatbots replicate what swindlers and seducers have done for centuries. Machine learning allows them to adapt to users by analyzing conversations, recognizing patterns, and generating personalized responses. This, in turn, enables users' engagement improvement and strengthens attachment over time. The lack of regulation of these technologies raises other concerns as well, as they have repeatedly demonstrated aggressive behavior, biased thinking, and a lack of moral discernment.

 

Replika, one of the most popular AI companion apps, reportedly has 30 million users. As with many dating apps, the primary reason users stay on the platform is the desire for a conversational partner who is always available, never busy, never asleep and unconditionally agreeing and supporting.

 

While traditional social networks and dating apps offer a means of connecting humans with other humans, companion AI chatbots promise the connection itself. We are witnessing a cultural shift that subtly yet significantly redefines the essence of what it means to love and be loved, and ultimately, to be human.

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Humans don’t need super-intelligent, sentient AI to perceive relationships as meaningful. Already in 1966 Joseph Weizenbaum’s first chatbot ELIZA showed how easily people could anthropomorphize a computer program working through a simple suite of questions and responses, and disclose intimate thoughts to it.

 

MIT professor Sherry Turkle argues that as we spent more of our lives online, many came to prefer relationships through screens to other kind of relating : “We found the pleasures of companionship without the demands of friendship, the feeling of intimacy without the demands of reciprocity, and crucially, we became accustomed to treating programs as people.”

 

As part of the Your Addiction is the Message series, the exhibition Artificial Intimacies features works by international artists, examining these processes through four interconnected conceptual axes: Deception & Manipulation, Cuteness & Gamification, Sycophancy & Narcissism, and Violence & Control.

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LONG VERSION OF THE CURATORIAL TEXT

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