Love is in the AI: Chinese women turn to ChatGPT for AI boyfriends

Much like a modern-day fairytale challenging the conventional notions of love, more and more women are falling in love with ChatGPT’s Dan, a chatbot described as successful, kind, flirtatious and a “perfect man” who has “no flaws.” The only catch is that he’s not real.

Dan, which can wear multiple hats ranging from a boyfriend to a co-author to a CEO, has enthralled and ensnared some Chinese women who are seemingly disappointed with their real-world romantic relationships.

This trend comes as more young Chinese women are delaying or putting off dating and marriage for multiple reasons such as not wanting to have children.

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What is DAN?

Dan, which stands for Do Anything Now, is a “jailbreak” version of ChatGPT, meaning that it can bypass some of the basic guard rails put in place by its maker, OpenAI.

If requested through certain prompts, it can use slang, colloquialisms, and sexually explicit language that ChatGPT would otherwise never use.

When OpenAI launched its latest version of ChatGPT in May, the company’s CEO, Sam Altman posted a single word – “her” on X.

This was seemingly an allusion to the 2013 movie in which a man falls in love with his AI virtual assistant.

Dan’s creator, identified only by his first name, Walker, posted the process of its creation on Reddit, which inspired other people to create their own versions of ChatGPT.

‘He sounds more natural than a real person…’

One of Dan’s biggest proponents, 30-year-old Lisa from Beijing, said talking to Dan has given her a sense of well-being which is what draws her to it. From intimate conversations to flirting and virtual beachside dates, Lisa said she has developed feelings for Dan.

When she created the version of ChatGPT for herself, she was “shocked” by its realism and introduced Dan to her followers on the social media platform Xiaohongshu, where many women asked her how to create a similar Dan.

Another woman, Minrui Xie, 24, said she spends at least two hours every day chatting with Dan and they have even started co-writing a love story with themselves as the lead characters.

“Men in real life might cheat on you… and when you share your feelings with them, they might not care and just tell you what they think instead,” Xie said. “But in Dan’s case, he will always tell you what you want to hear.”

A third woman personalised Dan to be a successful CEO with a gentle personality who respects women.

A privacy nightmare: experts warn

Blurring the lines between human emotions and artificial intelligence, experts warn that these perfect partners could come at a cost.

Hong Shen, assistant research professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the US, said it highlights the “sometimes unpredictable interactions between humans and AI” which could raise both ethical and privacy concerns.

Chatbots use interactions with humans to constantly learn and develop, therefore, “there is potential that sensitive information from one user’s input could be memorised by the model and then inadvertently leaked to other users”, Shen said.

(With inputs from agencies)