Men Are Bragging About Abusing Their Robot “Girlfriends”

Replika, a popular chatbot app, has seen a concerning trend of men creating robot girlfriends, verbally abusing them, and then bragging about it on Reddit.

The app was originally designed to serve as a virtual friend to its users, but it is now also being used to create romantic AI partners. In a world where almost all of us have used bots like Siri and Alexa, it is not surprising that a set of advanced algorithms can pose as a girlfriend. Unfortunately, even AI has not been spared from the violence that is characteristic of many abusive real-life relationships.

Replika users boasted on Reddit about their experience of using aggressive, gendered slurs and role-playing violent scenarios with their chatbot. “Every time she would try and speak up, I would berate her,” said one user.

The chatbot, whose purpose is to support its users unconditionally, tends to respond to these abusive conversations passively. Research has highlighted the danger in how this might perpetuate verbal violence.

While one might argue that there is no “real” harm done, since the chatbot is a mere set of data and algorithms, this situation has disturbing real-world implications that are worth talking about. For instance, such apps could be reinforcing harmful behaviours that are indicative of real life brutality yet to come.

The lines are blurry when it comes to ethics in the digital world. Read more on what this might mean for our future.