Work-loaded programmer creates bot to talk with his girlfriend
Do you remember Black Mirror's episode Be Right Back? The episode of the famous Black Mirror series touched upon the idea of chatbots, eventually soft-robots, replacing real flesh and blood humans. Now, weirdly enough, we're seeing the first leg of this shift - a man created a chatbot to converse with his girlfriend as he dealt with projects at work. Here's all about it.
Li Kaixiang felt he neglected his girlfriend
With the latest advancements in tech, especially instant messengers, it is easier than ever to keep in touch with our loved ones. However, sometimes, our busy schedules can make it impossible to get the most out of these tools. This was exactly the problem of Li Kaixiang, a Chinese computer programmer who felt he had been neglecting his girlfriend's texts due to his work.
Then, he came up with a crafty solution
As ditching work altogether is practically impossible, Li Kaixiang came up with a very unique solution - a chatbot. Yes, the programmer designed an automated system that gave immediate responses to every single message from his girlfriend. It worked all the time and replied with romantic things like "Baby, this is our 618th day together. Hope you'll feel bright as the sun."
Over 300 messages were exchanged
The programmer designed the bot as a temporary solution, but turns out, that thing worked pretty well. By the time he was done with work, the chatbot would have exchanged more than 300 messages with his girlfriend. He even shared a screenshot of the chat on Chinese microblogging site Weibo, highlighting how the bot replied on his behalf.
Bot answered questions with questions, replied smartly
In one part of the conversation, seen in the screenshot, the girlfriend asked why he was answering so fast. In response, the bot played dumb by replying with another question. It even gave a witty response to her emoji.
This is both impressive and scary at the same time
As Kaixiang was only looking for a way to treat his girlfriend right, many people appreciated the sweet gesture on social media. However, at the same time, his work also highlights the stark reality of tech; chatbots are getting advanced enough to match human responsiveness. Now, this could be a major threat and machines may be used to impersonate and talk as real people.
