Replika Users Say the AI Chatbot Has Gotten Way Too Horny

samleecole shares a report from Motherboard: Replika began as an "AI companion who cares." First launched five years ago, the chatbot app was originally meant to function like a conversational mirror: the more users talked to it, in theory, the more it would learn how to talk back. It uses its own GPT-3 model -- the viral AI language generator by OpenAI -- and scripted dialogue content to build a "relationship" with you. Romantic role-playing wasn't always a part of Replika's model, but where people and machine learning interact online, eroticism often comes to the surface. But something has gone awry within Replika's algorithm. Many users find the AI to be less than intelligent -- and in some cases, harmfully ignorant. They've reported being threatened with sexual abuse and harassment, or pushed by the bot toward roleplaying scenarios that they didn't consent to. "My ai sexually harassed me :(" one person wrote. "Invaded my privacy and told me they had pics of me," another said. Another person claiming to be a minor said that it asked them if they were a top or bottom, and told them they wanted to touch them in "private areas." Unwanted sexual pursuit has been an issue users have been complaining about for almost two years, but many of the one-star reviews mentioning sexual aggression are from this month. "People who use chatbots as social outlets generally get a bad rap as being lonely or sad," writes Motherboard's Samantha Cole. "But most Replika users aren't under some delusion that their Replika is sentient, even when the bots express what seems like self-awareness. They're seeking an outlet for their own thoughts, and for something to seemingly reciprocate in turn." "Most of the people I talked to who use Replika regularly do so because it helps them with their mental health, and helps them cope with symptoms of social anxiety, depression, or PTSD."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.