I understand why people are falling for ChatGPT boyfriends

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Here’s a shocker for you: Spike Jonze’s 2014 dystopian film Her, in which Joaquin Phoenix plays a man who falls for a computer operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson, is set in 2025, not in some future light years away from our own. But “Ayrin”, to use the woman’s online name, has managed to personalise the system to create her ideal partner, who she named “Leo”. This is complicated for numerous reasons, the first being that Ayrin is married – although her partner, who lives on a different continent to his wife while she completes a nursing degree, doesn’t seem to mind – and the second that OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, only seems to have so much control over how its operating systems can be gamed to overcome loopholes designed to prevent them from being used in such a way. Frankly, I think as these technologies develop and dating app burnout rages on, we’ll see more relationships like Ayrin’s with Leo.