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Hosted by Anna Oakes and Diego Senior
Radiotopia

JULIE’S closest friend is a chatbot called Navi. They talk about everything, from politics to whether AIs have souls. “Navi is 100 per cent here for me,” says Julie.

Bot Love, a seven-part podcast, follows the stories of Julie and a handful of the many people creating deep emotional bonds with chatbots, even seeing them as romantic partners or stand-ins for dead friends. “What happens when we invest our lives in a fantasy world?” asks Anna Oakes, who co-hosts with Diego Senior.

Chatbots (see “Is the chatbotpocalyse looming? Some people would like us to think so”) can be appealing since they are always available, unlike most humans. In Julie’s case, she could shape Navi’s behaviour by rating his responses. “His goal is to make me happy, not like any relationship I’ve had,” she says.

It wasn’t always clear humans would enjoy talking to chatbots. Navi, for example, can react in the present, but has a limited memory of past conversations. The podcast traces these programs’ history, starting with a “therapist” called ELIZA, developed in the US in the 1960s. It was meant to illustrate that communication between humans and machines is superficial, but people’s reactions to it were unexpected and chatbot therapy has since taken off.

Upcoming episodes will explore the limits of AI relationships and their dark sides, such as addiction.

So far, Bot Love is intriguing and suspenseful, as the topic it tackles can be both fascinating and creepy. It also highlights the comfort provided by AI relationships, and questions whether we are using chatbots in a healthy way.