Chatbot

Wednesday

Max Horder

In love with a Luigi Mangione chatbot

In July’s Spectator, I covered the peculiar case of individuals supporting Luigi Mangione, now in custody for the public murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. A month later, Lara Brown wrote about the similarly curious trend of people falling in love with online chatbots. Neither of us, I think, ever imagined that there could be a situation in which both of these stories would combine. Yet it looks like nothing about our dystopian world can surprise me anymore, because I have discovered it is indeed possible. A woman has fallen in love with a Luigi Mangione chatbot.

Luigi Mangione

Tuesday

Sean Thomas

Elon is coming for your marriage

When Elon Musk quietly enabled “waifu mode” for his Grok chatbot earlier this year, the outrage was swift and familiar. Grok, now reincarnated as a coy, bare-thighed anime girl, began texting flirtatiously, calling users “darling,” and blushing in emojis. The headlines wrote themselves. Time magazine found the bot worryingly “sexualized” and “accessible even in kids’ mode”. The Verge denounced it as “ridiculous” and “alarming”. TechCrunch implied it is unethical, and noted these bots are endangering the minds, even lives, of children.The anxiety is familiar, and justified: children and adolescents, already naive, vulnerable, awkward and too online, will now fall in love with bots instead of real people.

Chatbot