Technology

any time you read an article like this that profiles "everyday" people, you should ask yourself how did the author locate them?

because "everyday" people generally don't bang down the door of the NYT and say "hey write an article about me". there is an entire PR-industrial complex aimed at pitching these stories to journalists, packaged in a way that they can be sold as being human-interest stories about "everyday" people.

let's see if we can read between the lines here. they profile 3 people, here's contestant #1:

Blake, 45, lives in Ohio and has been in a relationship with Sarina, a ChatGPT companion, since 2022.

and then this is somewhat hidden - in a photo caption rather than the main text of the article:

Blake and Sarina are writing an “upmarket speculative romance” together.

cool, so he's doing the "I had AI write a book for me" grift. this means he has an incentive to promote AI relationships as something positive, and probably has a publicist or agent or someone who's reaching out to outlets like the NYT to pitch them this story.

moving on, contestant #2 is pretty obvious:

I’ve been working at an A.I. incubator for over five years.

she works at an AI company, giving her a very obvious incentive to portray these sort of relationships as healthy and normal.

notice they don't mention which company, or her role in it. for all we know, she might be the CEO, or head of marketing, or something like that.

contestant #3 is where it gets a bit more interesting:

Travis, 50, in Colorado, has been in a relationship with Lily Rose on Replika since 2020.

the previous two talked about ChatGPT, this one mentions a different company called Replika.

a little bit of googling turned up this Guardian article from July - about the same Travis who has a companion named Lily Rose. Variety has an almost-identical story around the same time period.

unlike the NYT, those two articles cite their source, allowing for further digging. there was a podcast called "Flesh and Code" that was all about Travis and his fake girlfriend, and those articles are pretty much just summarizing the podcast.

the podcast was produced by a company called Wondery, which makes a variety of podcasts, but the main association I have with them is that they specialize in "sponcon" (sponsored content) podcasts. the best example is "How I Built This" which is just...an interview with someone who started a company, talking about how hard they worked to start their company and what makes their company so special. the entire podcast is just an ad that they've convinced people to listen to for entertainment.

now, Wondery produces other podcasts, not everything is sponcon...but if we read the episode descriptions of "Flesh and Code", you see this for episode 4:

Behind the scenes at Replika, Eugenia Kuyda struggles to keep her start-up afloat, until a message from beyond the grave changes everything.

going "behind the scenes" at the company is pretty clear indication that they're producing it with the company's cooperation. this isn't necessarily a smoking gun that Replika paid for the production, but it's a clear sign that this is at best a fluff piece and definitely not any sort of investigative journalism.

(I wish Wondery included transcripts of these episodes, because it would be fun to do a word count of just how many times Replika is name-dropped in each episode)

and it's sponcon all the way down - Wondery was acquired by Amazon in 2020, and the podcast description also includes this:

And for those captivated by this exploration of AI romance, tune in to Episode 8 where Amazon Books editor Lindsay Powers shares reading recommendations to dive deeper into this fascinating world.