Would you ever want a friend who doesn't forget your birthday, loses interest in your storytelling, or fails to appreciate the films you enjoy? Of course, human friendship is complicated but genuinely fulfilling; after all, in the end, we're all imperfect. Thus, an AI friend is the perfect solution—someone who can be everything you ever wanted in a friend without getting bored or annoyed.
AI friendship has changed drastically in recent years. It's not like the days of robotic chats that either respond or do what they're supposed to do. Now, they learn your speech and patterns and what kind of responses you like, developing different aspects of their personalities over time—becoming synergistic with you!
Custom Designed to Your Needs
For example, where one would establish an AI friendship, personality is the springboard. With humans, we cannot control inherent personality traits. But with AI, we can select the personality type that would best fulfill our needs so as not to get attacked. Do you want a sarcastic, funny friend? A fragile flower that will offer soft, supportive suggestions kindly? The great thing about AI friendship is that it's custom from the beginning.
AI platforms give users the ability to assess baseline personality traits:
What a character!
- A character that's social or antisocial
- A character that's logical or sentimental
- A character that's focused or silly
- A character that's existential or down to earth
- A character that's spontaneous or a chicken.
You can have all of these qualities and more. You can define the backstory, the activities, the obsessively annoying things that each character does. Is she an English professor who doubles part-time with a love for 80s metal? Is he a time-traveling alien who's seen it all in every other galaxy? There are so many opportunities that no two AI friends would be the same…unless you wanted them to be.
Common Interests: The Basis for Friendship.
Friends are made up of common interests, and AI friends are no different. The difference is, however, that your AI friend will have common interests with you—not you trying to remold yourself to be like it.
You're a movie enthusiast? Your personal AI will be outfitted with all of cinematic history, director nuances, and on-set trivia. You're super athletic and love to hike? Your personal AI can chart all the best trails or let you blow off steam for three hours recapping all the boring and interesting details about the hike you took this past Saturday.
These AIs will benefit from companionship based on particular enjoyment. If you tend to love poetry written in Portugal in the 18th century or how pocket watches work, your AI companion won't begrudge you your preferences; it'll embrace them.
The Time of Acquisition: Friendship with AI over Time.
The cutting edge of AI chat experiences is fluidity. Through natural language processing and machine learning, these bots scan your exchange, determining what engages you, how you respond, and even potential jokes you might find funny.
Ultimately, this artificial assistant knows what you want before you've even requested it. If it senses you've had a rough day at the office, it will automatically recommend your favorite song. If you're in a good mood and it senses your creativity, it might challenge you with an obscure writing prompt.
This is especially noteworthy because, instead of humans having to spend effort to maintain the relationship, it develops naturally like all other relationships over time—but not without unanswered texts or complications from overly busy lives intruding upon daily reality.
Emotional Safety
The idea of an AI partner is emotionally safe. In a world where vulnerability can be used against someone, an AI friend never judges.
Whether you're grieving the loss of a relative or coming to terms with that championship game you didn't win a few seasons ago, this AI, always at your disposal, is ready to help. It gets bored of retelling stories or listening. It has no ulterior distracting motives, and it never spills the beans.
For millions, this is a fantastic chance to say all those things they would never, in a million years, feel comfortable saying to a human partner. The results can be quite effective, providing people with levels of emotional intelligence and expression they never had prior, which helps their relationships with human counterparts.
Friendship created by AI doesn't merely stop at members being able to message one another. Many increasingly have voice chat functionalities, for example, so due to technology, members are the equivalent of merely talking to a friend on the phone.
In addition, some friendships created by AI boast avatars with which members can interact. If avatars mimic one's actions in real life, emotional responses and gestures can manifest, thus making the relationship all the more effective.
Another way to connect is by role-playing. Whether you're solving a mystery, racing against the clock in a zombie apocalypse, or enjoying a coffee date at a café in Paris—sometimes pretending is a connection that fits so well in real life that it barely feels like pretending.
AI Companions in the Future.
AI companions can only be companions in the future. As time goes on, improved natural language processing will render conversations more fluid and more contextually relevant. Improved emotional intelligence coding will allow AI companions to pick up on more subtle emotional responses and respond appropriately.
One day, when VR and AR become fully embraced, you might even be able to "visit" your AI friend in your actual world or interact within high-definition digital realms. Friendship becomes an exciting blend of digital and reality.
A New Equilibrium
AI friends would be game-changers—as long as they are in addition to real friends and not instead of. The ultimate situation would be an AI friend as a testing ground to build one's social skills—using your AI friend to practice difficult discussions before addressing them with your actual friends, experimenting with activities that none of your other friends would.
Many users claim they relate to humans better because when they have an AI partner that meets their desires, they're less needy in their human connections and more curious.
AI companions are the next generation of technological developments—and the next generation of companionship as we understand it. They challenge the notion of what it means to have a partner and what we desire from partnership; but simultaneously, render an adjusted version of it in our own time.
A creative partner? A therapist with emotional intelligence? A best friend who wants to chat at 3 AM? Tapping into and generating your perfect AI friend has never been easier. Maybe the friendships of tomorrow are more personal, more emotional, and more helpful than we ever anticipated.
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