Speaking of perfidious AI, here’s a story about users who developed intimate relationships with chatbots, and what happened when the companies behind these bots decided to alter their programming.

There are several revealing quotes from Eugenia Kuyda, the CEO of Luka, which makes a chatbot app called Replika. At one point she reponds to claims that the company pulled a bait-and-switch by removing the ability for bots to respond sexually:

Kuyda disputed Rodichev’s claim that Replika lured users with promises of sex. She said the company briefly ran digital ads promoting “NSFW” — “not suitable for work” — pictures to accompany a short-lived experiment with sending users “hot selfies,” but she did not consider the images to be sexual because the Replikas were not fully naked.

Someone who thinks an image can only be sexual if it contains full nudity is not someone I trust to understand people at all.