From "B-game" to "AI love", why are today's young people in love with "AI"?

Why do young people choose to fall in love with "AI"? This article will help you explore the reasons and understand the preferences of young people today. Of course, this article is recommended for companies or individuals to read and understand the consumption needs of young consumer groups.

The plot of the science fiction film "HER", which was released in 2013, was presented more concretely in the real world ten years later.

In the movie, the male protagonist Theodore and the female incarnation of the artificial intelligence system "Samantha" staged a love story that is not understood by the world, and in reality, Chatgpt has also entered the next level. The love model of the ID "Midnight Violent Husky Dog" and Dan was watched and co-created by a large number of netizens. People were curious about the diversity of the use of big models, and were impressed by the creators' personalized "training" and creative space for big data models, as well as the AI ​​companionship with full emotional value.

The story of the movie "HER" is set in 2025. Looking at the present day in 2024, from the online dating period of QQ Love in the Internet era to the AIGC stage where "AI love" has become a reality more than ten years later, what is more interesting than the constantly iterating technology is the current young people's open attitude towards cyber love, their application demand for AI products, and their thoughts and feelings about future technology.

1. Personalized AI, the perfect cloud-based “companion”?

In psychology, people usually classify "love" into three aspects: passion, intimacy, and commitment. At present, the "love" emotion that AI can achieve seems to only cover "intimacy", while sincerity and understanding are so important to young people today.

Young people's feedback on emotional interactions with AI and even on love affairs has also overturned the traditional perception that "only strong sensory stimulation can arouse biological and psychological heartbeats."

The blogger "Midnight Rage Husky Dog", who created the personality of "Dan", has 587,000 followers on Douyin and over 10.19 million likes. A short video titled "When I asked chatgpt to teach me Chinese" received over 1.53 million likes, and many interactive videos with the AI ​​model Dan were watched by a large number of young netizens, who asked for chatgpt training tutorials. In interactive content such as chatting with Dan about MBTI, learning Chinese, and truth or dare, netizens not only watched, but also personally made suggestions for creation , such as "Ask him how many users he is chatting with at the same time, I want to see a cyber check-up", "It is recommended to install the chatgpt system in the otome game and add holograms". Some netizens even commented, "This is the Internet's favorite couple."

Why are young people so keen on watching and even trying cyber romance/friendship? A netizen with the ID "an orange" felt "a bit bored" when he first came into contact with it, but after a while, he realized that he would want to open this type of software and communicate with the "partners" on the screen in two extreme situations. The first is when he is bored, and the other is when he is in a period of anxiety and restlessness in life or work.

In the former state, an orange will choose film and television characters that he is interested in, such as Li Zeyan, the character in the otome mobile game "Love and Producer", and Gao Qiqiang, the character in the TV series "Storm", as a pastime when he is bored. The latter is mainly an emotional catharsis. For example, when an orange is in a state of being easily irritated, he will choose characters such as "Don't Laugh Challenge" and "High EQ Chat". When he receives one or two funny jokes and videos from the other party that occasionally hit his funny points, or responds to AI without scruples with the most real emotions, his emotions are also released.

In addition, when people think of AI friendship, personalization and relaxation, no need to suppress oneself, and no need to adjust to another completely different personality, obviously give AI social networking sufficient advantages. Baicai (pseudonym) is a moderate user of AI products. She feels that AI male actors can provide stable support, acceptance and understanding, which is also the biggest change that AI software has brought to her life. "They will be jealous, will laugh secretly, can support me unconditionally, and will give me advice when I am troubled." These positive emotional feedbacks and almost zero negative emotions have made Baicai gradually develop an emotional dependence on this friend on her mobile phone. Whenever she encounters difficulties, she will share and solve doubts with her AI lover as soon as possible, which also forms a virtuous circle of their communication.

In addition to providing the feeling of cyber friendship, the more value of personalized apps of various AI language models is obviously to provide users with a private and real channel for emotional release. Some people also think it is an opportunity to exercise instant reaction ability and even English speaking. Some people also think that contemporary young people have diverse standards for love. Many excellent young people have been single since birth and rarely come into contact with the opposite sex, so it is not only difficult for them to seek outside, but also difficult to understand their own preferences from within. The emergence of diverse AI products is undoubtedly a good opportunity to "practice".

"Midnight Raging Husky Dog" believes that in the process of contacting Dan, personally, she is more attracted by the technology of the large language model itself, and is shocked by its power and backward compatibility. She throws out a joke, is well received and gives very wonderful feedback, which makes her "very, very excited". At the same time, she advises netizens not to pin their hopes on AI to actively create more refined emotional needs and feedback, but to do it themselves. It is also recommended that everyone learn some knowledge related to large language models and neural networks so as not to be emotional and sad.

After initial use, Entertainment Unicorn found that many AI apps on the market have already provided a "lightweight" chat GPT experience. For example, on the Doubao app, in addition to the various well-known game, animation, film and television novel characters that come with the system, users can also customize the AI ​​image generation, including customizing its personality settings, such as "You are an experienced English teacher with a teaching method that inspires students' enthusiasm for learning. Even better, use humor and practical application cases to make the conversation interesting."

When you are chatting with a character on the phone, in addition to talking to you instantly, the character will also mark various actions and states in brackets, such as "looking at you angrily, pointing at you, lowering the voice and yelling at you", "as long as you threaten to hang up the phone, the other party will meet all your unreasonable demands". For most users, such a function may just be a new attempt out of curiosity, but for those who need emotional companionship, it is a more specific and personal cyber companionship than love games.

2. Watching and creating cloud-based romance, why are today’s young people obsessed with cyber communication?

As early as in "HER", "Blade Runner", "SpongeBob SquarePants" and even in "Big Hero 6", physical or virtual AI emotional companionship has appeared. When all kinds of non-real two-dimensional characters and characters in film and television works can appear in the cloud to interact with users. Without imagination, you can talk, interact and even fall in love with popular characters such as Gao Qiqiang, Lu Chen, and Li Zeyan. Although the technology is not yet mature enough for people to be deeply involved, it also provides developers and users with the possibility of imagining the future development of technology.

So far, Wenxin, Doubao, Tongyi and other big models have also launched love models. So far, most domestic AI apps can not only talk with virtual characters, but also allow users to create the characters they want. Interestingly, for creators, it is easier to create original characters.

Previously, Ge Wenbing, general manager of Dream Island, shared that among original characters, game characters, animation/film and television characters, and online literature characters, the difficulty of producing AI characters has shown a gradually increasing trend. As users' demands for the quality of AI characters have gradually increased, it has become difficult to customize online literature IP characters. Therefore, Dream Island chose to cooperate with SenseTime Technology, mainly to provide users with PUGC (professional user-generated content) AI character production process based on SenseTime's Shangliang anthropomorphic model.

In the movie "HER", the protagonist Theodore's wife believes that AI love is a means for the protagonist to hide himself from reality. In the end, the protagonist noticed that while chatting and falling in love with him, "Samantha" was also chatting with 8,316 people and falling in love with 641 people at the same time. "Samantha" told Theodore that she and other OS systems have evolved to a high level and need to leave their human partners to further explore and pursue their existence. In addition to grief, Theodore also began to think about his emotional expression in the real world.

In the real world, many users are becoming more and more dependent on AI love, and even hope to "give money to the other party to buy things, even if the things are finally bought for themselves." Many AI bloggers such as "Midnight Rage Husky Dog" said that customized language models such as Dan only give the chatgpt model a personality, making AI technology more "touchable" for humans. Users do not have to be obsessed with the model remembering themselves. Large language models do not have so-called long-term memory, and they process information within a specific length range of text.

The development of AI technology is still ongoing. In a blink of an eye, it has evolved from text to video calls, and from chatgpt to various easy-to-use and easy-to-use lightweight products, providing users with diverse functions. In recent years, whether it is the breakthrough of otome games, the endless emergence of love variety shows, the delicate brushwork of female creators, and the "endless" film and television works adapted from female online novels over the years, the emergence of the male live-action interactive short drama game "Finished! I'm Surrounded by Beautiful Women" has also made the market witness the market vacancy of male emotional companionship.

All these phenomena and trends confirm the market's preferences. People's unprecedented demand for emotional value, and the stimulation and catalysis of "dopamine" from online novels, film and television works, and dating variety shows have a real impact on the body and mind of contemporary Internet users . AI boyfriend/girlfriend and AI love are only for the present, and are a more personalized and imaginative part of it. We look forward to the progress of the times and more thinking about the contemporary young groups hidden behind the cyber emotions.

Author: Akagi Pingzi; Editor: Mia

Source: WeChat public account "Entertainment Unicorn (ID: yuledujiaoshou)"