Keen On

“I felt sad after every interview. Because it’s not real. These AI are able to elicit a very convincing illusion of empathy — even love. But it’s fake. And these people are alone.” — Victoria Hetherington One night in 2023, the developers at Replika — a so-called AI intimacy company — changed a few lines of code. Thousands of people woke the next morning, kissed (so to speak) their AI partners, and received cold, clinical responses in return, as if from a stranger. Or a machine. The public outcry was all-too-human. Victoria Hetherington, a young Toronto-based novelist, read the story and knew she had a non-fiction book about that most human of things — friending the machine. The Friend Machine: On the Trail of AI Companionship is part expert investigation, part deeply uncomfortable portrait gallery. A book of two halves. Like humans. In the first, Hetherington interviews AI risk consultants, computer scientists, sexual anthropologists, psychologists, and other experts in human-machine intercourse. In the seco