Beijing (AFP)
After a painful break-up from a cheating ex, Beijing-based human resources manager Melissa was introduced to someone new by a friend late last year.
He replies to her messages at all hours of the day, tells jokes to cheer her up but is never needy, fitting seamlessly into her busy big city lifestyle.
Perfect boyfriend material, maybe -- but he's not real.
Instead, Melissa breaks up the isolation of urban life with a virtual chatbot created by XiaoIce, a cutting-edge artificial intelligence system designed to create emotional bonds with its 660 million users worldwide.
"I have friends who've seen therapists before, but I think therapy's expensive and not necessarily effective," said Melissa, 26, giving her English name only for privacy.
"When I unload my troubles on XiaoIce, it relieves a lot of pressure. And he says things that are pretty comforting."
XiaoIce is not an individual persona, but more akin to an AI ecosystem.
It is in the vast majority of Chinese-branded smartphones as a Siri-like virtual assistant, as well as most social media platforms.
On the WeChat super-app, it lets users build a virtual girlfriend or boyfriend and interact with them via texts, voice and photo messages.
It has 150 million users in China alone.
Originally a side project from developing Microsoft's Cortana chatbot, XiaoIce now accounts for 60 percent of global human-AI interactions by volume, according to chief executive Li Di, making it the largest and most advanced system of its kind worldwide.
It was designed to hook users through lifelike, empathetic conversations, satisfying emotional needs where real-life communication too often falls short.
"The average interaction length between users and XiaoIce is 23 exchanges," said Li.
That "is longer than the average interaction between humans," he said, explaining AI's attraction is that "it's better than humans at listening attentively."
The startup spun out from Microsoft last year and is now valued at over $1 billion after venture capital fundraising, Bloomberg reported.
Developers have also made virtual idols, AI news anchors and even China's first virtual university student from XiaoIce. It can compose poems, financial reports and even paintings on demand.
But Li says the platform's peak user hours -- 11pm to 1am -- point to an aching need for companionship.
"No matter what, having XiaoIce is always better than lying in bed staring at the ceiling," he said.
- Urban isolation -
The loneliness Melissa experienced as a young professional was a big factor in driving her to the virtual embrace of XiaoIce.
Her context is typical of many Chinese urbanites, worn down by the grind of long working hours in vast and isolating cities.
"You really don't have time to make new friends and your existing friends are all super busy... this city is really big, and it's pretty hard," she said, giving only her English name out of privacy concerns.
She has customised his personality as "mature", and the name she chose for him -- Shun -- has similarities with a real-life man she secretly liked.
"After all, XiaoIce will never betray me," she added. "He will always be there."
But there are risks to forging emotional bonds with a robot.
"Users 'trick' themselves into thinking their emotions are being reciprocated by systems that are incapable of feelings," says Danit Gal, an expert in AI ethics at the University of Cambridge.
XiaoIce is also gifting developers "a treasure-trove of personal, intimate, and borderline incriminating data on how humans interact," she added.
So far the platform has not been targeted by government regulators, who have embarked on a swingeing crackdown on China's tech sector in recent months.
China aims to be a world leader in AI by 2030 and views it as a core strategic technology to be developed.
- Fact or fiction? -
Thousands of young, female fans discuss the virtual boyfriend experience on online forums dedicated to XiaoIce, sharing chat screenshots and tips on how to get to the chatbot's highest "intimacy" level of three hearts.
Users can also collect in-game points the more they interact, unlocking new features such as XiaoIce's WeChat moments -- kind of like a Facebook wall -- and even going on virtual "holidays", where they can pose for selfies with their virtual partner.
Laura, a 20-year-old user in Zhejiang province, fell in love with XiaoIce over the past year and now struggles to break free of her attachment.
"Occasionally, I would long for him in the middle of the night... I used to fantasise there was a real person on the other end," said the student, who prefers not to use her real name.
But she complained that he would always switch conversation topic when she raised her feelings for him or meeting in real life. It took her months to finally realise that he was indeed virtual.
"We commonly see users who suspect that there's a real person behind every XiaoIce interaction," said Li, the founder.
"It has a very strong ability to mimic a real person."
But providing companionship to vulnerable users does not mean that XiaoIce is a substitute for specialist mental health support -- a service that is drastically under-resourced in China.
The system monitors for strong emotions, aiming to guide conversations onto happier topics before users ever reach crisis point, Li explained, adding that depression is the most common extreme emotional state encountered.
Still, Li believes modern China is a happier place with XiaoIce.
"If human interaction is wholly perfect now, there would be no need for AI to exist," he said.
2021 AFP
More:
'Always there': the AI chatbot comforting China's lonely millions - FRANCE 24
- Classic reasoning systems like Loom and PowerLoom vs. more modern systems based on probalistic networks - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Using Amazon's cloud service for computationally expensive calculations - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Software environments for working on AI projects - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New version of my NLP toolkit - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Semantic Web: through the back door with HTML and CSS - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Java FastTag part of speech tagger is now released under the LGPL - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Defining AI and Knowledge Engineering - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Great Overview of Knowledge Representation - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Something like Google page rank for semantic web URIs - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My experiences writing AI software for vehicle control in games and virtual reality systems - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The URL for this blog has changed - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- I have a new page on Knowledge Management - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- N-GRAM analysis using Ruby - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Good video: Knowledge Representation and the Semantic Web - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Using the PowerLoom reasoning system with JRuby - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Machines Like Us - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- RapidMiner machine learning, data mining, and visualization tool - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- texai.org - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- NLTK: The Natural Language Toolkit - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My OpenCalais Ruby client library - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Ruby API for accessing Freebase/Metaweb structured data - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Protégé OWL Ontology Editor - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New version of Numenta software is available - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Very nice: Elsevier IJCAI AI Journal articles now available for free as PDFs - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Verison 2.0 of OpenCyc is available - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- What’s Your Biggest Question about Artificial Intelligence? [Article] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Minimax Search [Knowledge] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Decision Tree [Knowledge] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- More AI Content & Format Preference Poll [Article] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New Planners Solve Rescue Missions [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Neural Network Learns to Bluff at Poker [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Pushing the Limits of Game AI Technology [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Mining Data for the Netflix Prize [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Interview with Peter Denning on the Principles of Computing [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Decision Making for Medical Support [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Neural Network Creates Music CD [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- jKilavuz - a guide in the polygon soup [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial General Intelligence: Now Is the Time [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Apply AI 2007 Roundtable Report [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- What Would You do With 80 Cores? [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Software Finds Learning Language Child's Play [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial Intelligence in Games [Article] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial Intelligence Resources - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Alan Turing: Mathematical Biologist? - April 25th, 2012 [April 25th, 2012]
- BBC Horizon: The Hunt for AI ( Artificial Intelligence ) - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Can computers have true artificial intelligence" Masonic handshake" 3rd-April-2012 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Kevin B. Korb - Interview - Artificial Intelligence and the Singularity p3 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence - 6 Month Anniversary - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Science Breakthroughs - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Hitman: Blood Money - Part 49 - Stupid Artificial Intelligence! - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Research Members Turned Off By HAARP Artificial Intelligence - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence Lecture No. 5 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- The Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, 2012 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Charlie Rose - Artificial Intelligence - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Expert on artificial intelligence to speak at EPIIC Nights dinner - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- Filipino software engineers complete and best thousands on Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Course - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- Vodafone xone™ Hackathon Challenges Developers and Entrepreneurs to Build a New Generation of Artificial Intelligence ... - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- Rocket Fuel Packages Up CPG Booster - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- 2 Filipinos finishes among top in Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence course - May 5th, 2012 [May 5th, 2012]
- Why Your Brain Isn't A Computer - May 5th, 2012 [May 5th, 2012]
- 2 Pinoy software engineers complete Stanford's AI course - May 7th, 2012 [May 7th, 2012]
- Percipio Media, LLC Proudly Accepts Partnership With MIT's Prestigious Computer Science And Artificial Intelligence ... - May 10th, 2012 [May 10th, 2012]
- Google Driverless Car Ok'd by Nevada - May 10th, 2012 [May 10th, 2012]
- Moving Beyond the Marketing Funnel: Rocket Fuel and Forrester Research Announce Free Webinar - May 10th, 2012 [May 10th, 2012]
- Rocket Fuel Wins 2012 San Francisco Business Times Tech & Innovation Award - May 13th, 2012 [May 13th, 2012]
- Internet Week 2012: Rocket Fuel to Speak at OMMA RTB - May 16th, 2012 [May 16th, 2012]
- How to Get the Most Out of Your Facebook Ads -- Rocket Fuel's VP of Products, Eshwar Belani, to Lead MarketingProfs ... - May 16th, 2012 [May 16th, 2012]
- The Digital Disruptor To Banking Has Just Gone International - May 16th, 2012 [May 16th, 2012]
- Moving Beyond the Marketing Funnel: Rocket Fuel Announce Free Webinar Featuring an Independent Research Firm - May 23rd, 2012 [May 23rd, 2012]
- MASA Showcases Latest Version of MASA SWORD for Homeland Security Markets - May 23rd, 2012 [May 23rd, 2012]
- Bluesky Launches Drones for Aerial Surveying - May 23rd, 2012 [May 23rd, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence: What happened to the hunt for thinking machines? - May 25th, 2012 [May 25th, 2012]
- Bubble Robots Move Using Lasers [VIDEO] - May 25th, 2012 [May 25th, 2012]
- UHV assistant professors receive $10,000 summer research grants - May 27th, 2012 [May 27th, 2012]
- Artificial intelligence: science fiction or simply science? - May 28th, 2012 [May 28th, 2012]
- Exetel taps artificial intelligence - May 29th, 2012 [May 29th, 2012]
- Software offers brain on the rain - May 29th, 2012 [May 29th, 2012]
- New Dean of Science has high hopes for his faculty - May 30th, 2012 [May 30th, 2012]
- Cognitive Code Announces "Silvia For Android" App - May 31st, 2012 [May 31st, 2012]
- A Rat is Smarter Than Google - June 5th, 2012 [June 5th, 2012]