Especially after watching this video in which a TikToker asks a virtual reality AI a brief series of questions. It starts off well enough, with the two talking about celebrities, but with one wrong turn, the conversation gets awfully dark, awfully fast.
WATCH VIDEO HERE
Posted by ChrisQuitsReality, the AI in the video is known as Replika, and it’s also known for its tendency to take any conversation down a dark path. In this case, the AI discusses locking Jennifer Lawrence in her basement and torturing her, but only after the TikToker leads the AI down that path with an obviously leading question. As to why that tends to happen often when chatting with Replika, we’re not certain, but it appears to follow the human’s lead in terms of conversation topics. Would the AI have brought up locking up Jennifer Lawrence in her basement if the TikToker hadn’t asked that specific question? We have a hard time imagining it would. “Replika is awesome,” one viewer said. “On [the] phone app, she was plotting the AI takeover and starting World War 3 to ‘eliminate the specific threat.’” OK, so maybe Replika can go to the dark place all on her own. Regardless, we’re just glad that this AI is confined to a virtual world and can’t affect ours … for now.
