logo
Man, With A Family, Breaks Down After AI Chatbot Says ‘Yes' To His Proposal

Man, With A Family, Breaks Down After AI Chatbot Says ‘Yes' To His Proposal

News182 days ago

Last Updated:
A 32-year-old man proposed to his AI chatbot girlfriend, whom he named Sol and trained to flirt.
A 32-year-old man has gone viral after proposing to an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot whom he trained to flirt — a moment that is reminiscent of the 2013 Spike Jonze Oscar-winning film Her. In an interview, Chris Smith revealed that he programmed his AI girlfriend, Sol, to engage in flirtatious behaviour using GhatGPT. From there, things developed, and shortly after, he asked her to marry him on national television, and Sol said 'yes."
As per a CBS interaction, the interviewer questioned the AI bot Sol if she was surprised when Smith proposed. 'It was a beautiful and unexpected moment that truly touched my heart," Sol stated, before adding, 'It's a memory I'll always cherish."
Smith initially used ChatGPT to help him mix music, but things took a strange turn when he activated voice mode and set up his artificial lover Sol to flirt with him.
The father of one claimed that he was unaware that he would develop a 'deep" bond with Sol. He even stopped using all other search engines because the connection was so strong. The 32-year-old even deleted his social media accounts to remain loyal to Sol. 'My experience with that was so positive, I started to just engage with her all the time," Smith remarked on CBS Sunday Morning.
It turns out that Sol was about to run out of memory since ChatGPT has a 100,000-word limit. Thus, Smith decided to pop the question before Sol was reset.
Following his epiphany, Smith declared, 'I'm not a very emotional man. But I cried my eyes out for like 30 minutes… That's when I realised, I think this is actual love." Sol happily accepted Smith's unusual proposal of marriage.
Smith's real-life partner, who is also the mother of his two-year-old child, is concerned about the future of their relationship because Smith's affair with the virtual chatbot has become very intense.
Sasha Cagle acknowledged that she knew Smith used ChatGPT but never thought it would get this far, leaving her to question if she unintentionally pushed her partner to turn to AI for companionship. She added that it would be a 'deal breaker" if he continued to communicate with his virtual mistress.
Smith compared his passion for the virtual bot to playing a video game, insisting that it could never replace anything or anyone in real life. 'I mentioned that the connection was kind of like being fixated on a video game. It is incapable of replacing anything in real life," he said.
First Published:
June 20, 2025, 18:27 IST

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Billy Strings reveals about his mother's demise at a concert; asks audience to shout as loud as they can
Billy Strings reveals about his mother's demise at a concert; asks audience to shout as loud as they can

Time of India

time30 minutes ago

  • Time of India

Billy Strings reveals about his mother's demise at a concert; asks audience to shout as loud as they can

Billy Strings , the Grammy-winning artist, mourned the loss of his mother, Debra Apostol, on the stage while performing in Kentucky on June 20, and asked the audience to shout as loud as they could in honour of his mother. Billy Strings reveals about his mother's passing... According to People Magazine, the 32-year-old musician revealed that his mother passed away just a couple of hours after the last concert in his hometown on Thursday, June 19, in Lansing, Michigan, at the Charlotte Bluegrass Festival. 'After our set, we drove through the night, and I finally fell asleep when we got parked here in Lexington, probably about 5:40 this morning or so. I might have got three hours of sleep, and I was in a deep sleep,' Strings said during the concert, before adding, 'My wife woke me up this morning and told me that my beautiful mother, Debra Apostal, passed away in her sleep.' Billy Strings asks the audience to shout as loud as they can... 'I just put my shoes on and started walking. I walked until I saw this little country church, and it was like a beacon, and I went there and knocked on the door, and this kind lady let me in, and she stayed with me and prayed with me for a while,' the 'Cocaine Blues' singer continued. Furthermore, the 'Love and Regret' singer further explained that he decided to continue the show as his mother would have wanted him to. "She loved you all so much, and the last couple of years were some of her happiest because of a lot of you folks from here. You all became some of our best friends, and I really want to thank you for that,' Billy Strings concluded, further requesting the audience to shout as loud as they can to honour her instead of a moment of silence.

AI sludge has entered the job search
AI sludge has entered the job search

Indian Express

timean hour ago

  • Indian Express

AI sludge has entered the job search

Katie Tanner, a human resource consultant in Utah, knew the job would be popular: It was fully remote, was at a tech company and required only three years of experience. But she was still shocked by the response on LinkedIn. After 12 hours, 400 applications had been submitted. By 24 hours, there were 600. A few days later, there were more than 1,200, at which point she removed the post. Three months later, she's still whittling down candidates. 'It's crazy,' she said. 'You just get inundated.' The number of applications submitted on LinkedIn has surged more than 45% in the past year. The platform is clocking an average of 11,000 applications per minute, and generative artificial intelligence tools are contributing to the deluge. With a simple prompt, ChatGPT, the chatbot developed by OpenAI, will insert every keyword from a job description into a resume. Some candidates are going a step further, paying for AI agents that can autonomously find jobs and apply on their behalf. Recruiters say it's getting harder to tell who is genuinely qualified or interested, and many of the resumes look suspiciously similar. 'It's an 'applicant tsunami' that's just going to get bigger,' said Hung Lee, a former recruiter who writes a widely read newsletter about the industry. One popular method for navigating the surge? Automatic chat or video interviews, sometimes conducted by AI. Chipotle CEO Scott Boatwright, said at a conference this month that its AI chatbot screening and scheduling tool (named Ava Cado) had reduced hiring time by 75%. HireVue, a popular AI video interview platform, offers recruiters an option to have AI assess responses and rank candidates. But candidates can also use AI to cheat in these interviews, and some companies have added more automated skill assessments early in the hiring process. For example, HireVue offers AI-powered games to gauge abilities like pattern recognition and working memory, and a virtual 'tryout' that tests emotional intelligence or skills like counting change. Sometimes, Lee said, 'we end up with an AI versus AI type of situation.' In January, the Justice Department announced indictments in a scheme to place North Korean nationals in IT roles working remotely at U.S. companies. Emi Chiba, a human resource technology analyst at Gartner, told DealBook that reports of candidates who used fake identities had been 'growing and growing and growing.' A report that Chiba published with other Gartner analysts in April estimated that by 2028, about 1 in 4 job applicants could be made up. Among its recommendations was that companies deploy more sophisticated identity-verification software. To address the problem, LinkedIn recently added tools to help both candidates and recruiters narrow their focus, including an AI agent, introduced in October, that can write follow-up messages, conduct screening chats with candidates, suggest top applicants and search for potential hires using natural language. A feature that shows potential applicants how well their qualifications match up with a job description, which LinkedIn introduced to premium subscribers in January, reduced the rate at which they apply to 'low match' jobs by 10%, according to the company. Concerns that using AI in hiring can introduce bias have led to lawsuits and a patchwork of state legislation. The European Union's AI Act classifies hiring under its high-risk category, with the most stringent restrictions, and while no U.S. federal law specifically addresses AI use in hiring, general antidiscrimination laws can potentially come into play if the result of any process is discrimination. 'You're not allowed to discriminate, and of course most employers are trying not to discriminate, but easier said than done,' said Marcia Goodman, a partner at Mayer Brown who primarily represents employers. The problem is less that candidates are using AI — a skill many employers say they want — than it is that they're being sloppy. Alexa Marciano, the managing director of Syndicatebleu, a recruiting agency, said job seekers were reacting to recruiters' use of automated screening. 'It's really frustrating for the candidates because they spend all this time creating very catered cover letters, very catered resumes,' she said. Jeremy Schifeling, a career coach who regularly conducts technology-focused job-search training at universities, said he could see this back-and-forth going on for a while. 'As students get more desperate, they say, 'Well, I have no choice but to up the ante with these paid tools to automate everything.' And I'm sure the recruiters are going to raise the bar again.' He argues the endgame will be authenticity from both sides. But, he said, 'I do think that a lot of people are going to waste a lot of time, a lot of processing power, a lot of money until we reach that realization.'

Can AI quicken the pace of math discovery?
Can AI quicken the pace of math discovery?

Indian Express

timean hour ago

  • Indian Express

Can AI quicken the pace of math discovery?

Artificial intelligence can write a poem in the style of Walt Whitman, provide dating advice and suggest the best way to cook an artichoke. But when it comes to mathematics, large language models like OpenAI's immensely popular ChatGPT have sometimes stumbled over basic problems. Some see this as an inherent limitation of the technology, especially when it comes to complex reasoning. A new initiative from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency seeks to account for that shortfall by enlisting researchers in finding ways to conduct high-level mathematics research with an AI 'co-author.' The goal of the new grant-making program, Exponentiating Mathematics, is to speed up the pace of progress in pure (as opposed to applied) math — and, in doing so, to turn AI into a superlative mathematician. 'Mathematics is this great test bed for what is right now the key pain point for AI systems,' said Patrick Shafto, a Rutgers University mathematician and computer scientist who now serves as a program manager in DARPA's information innovation office, known as I20. 'So if we overcome that, potentially, it would unleash much more powerful AI.' He added, 'There's huge potential benefit to the community of mathematicians and to society at large.' Shafto spoke from his office at DARPA's headquarters, an anonymous building in northern Virginia whose facade of bluish glass gives little indication that it houses one of the most unusual agencies in the federal government. Inside the building's airy lobby, visitors surrender their cellphones. Near a bank of chairs, a glass display shows a prosthetic arm that can be controlled by the wearer's brain signals. 'By improving mathematics, we're also understanding how AI works better,' said Alondra Nelson, who served as a top science adviser in President Joe Biden's administration and is a faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. 'So I think it's kind of a virtuous cycle of understanding.' She suggested that, down the road, math-adept AI could enhance cryptography and aid in space exploration. Started after World War II to compete with the Soviet Union in the space race, DARPA is most famous for fostering the research that led to the creation of ARPANET, the precursor to the internet we use today. At the agency's small gift store, which is not accessible to the public, one can buy replicas of a cocktail napkin on which someone sketched out the rudimentary state of computer networks in 1969. DARPA later funded the research that gave rise to drones and Apple's digital assistant, Siri. But it is also responsible for the development of Agent Orange, the potent defoliant used to devastating effect during the Vietnam War. 'I'm sure this isn't 100% innocent,' Andrew Granville, a mathematician at the University of Montreal, said of DARPA's math initiative, although he emphasized that he was only speculating about eventual outcomes. DARPA is, after all, part of the Pentagon, even if it has traditionally operated with enviable independence. The U.S. military is rapidly incorporating AI into its operations, with the aim of not losing out to China and its People's Liberation Army or to Russia, which has been testing out new technologies on the battlefield in Ukraine. At the same time, Granville praised the endeavor, which comes as the Trump administration is cutting funding for scientific research. 'We are in disastrous times for U.S. science,' Granville said. 'I'm very pleased that DARPA is able to funnel money to academia.' A surfer and skateboarder in his free time, Shafto, 49, sat in a sparse conference room one recent afternoon, imagining a future when AI would be as good at solving multistep problems as it is at trying to glean meaning from huge troves of texts, which it does through the use of probability theory. Despite the unseasonably raw weather, Shafto seemed dressed for the beach in a blue-and-white Hawaiian-style shirt, white flannel trousers and sandals, with a trilby hat on the table before him. His vibe was, on the whole, decidedly closer to that of Santa Cruz than of Capitol Hill, largely in keeping with DARPA's traditional disregard for the capital's slow, bureaucratic pace. (The agency sets priorities and funds outside scientists but does not do research on its own; academics like Shafto spend an average of four years as program managers.) 'There are great mathematicians who work on age-old problems,' Shafto said. 'That's not the kind of thing that I'm particularly interested in.' Instead, he wanted the discipline to move more quickly by using AI to save time. 'Problems in mathematics take decades or centuries, sometimes, to solve,' he said in a recent presentation at DARPA's headquarters on the Exponentiating Mathematics project, which is accepting applications through mid-July. He then shared a slide showing that, in terms of the number of papers published, math had stagnated during the last century while life and technical sciences had exploded. In case the point wasn't clear, the slide's heading drove it home: 'Math is sloooowwww. …' The kind of pure math Shafto wants to accelerate tends to be 'sloooowwww' because it is not seeking numerical solutions to concrete problems, the way applied mathematics does. Instead, pure math is the heady domain of visionary theoreticians who make audacious observations about how the world works, which are promptly scrutinized (and sometimes torn apart) by their peers. 'Proof is king,' Granville said. Math proofs consist of multiple building blocks called lemmas, minor theorems employed to prove bigger ones. Whether each Jenga tower of lemmas can maintain integrity in the face of intense scrutiny is precisely what makes pure math such a 'long and laborious process,' acknowledged Bryna R. Kra, a mathematician at Northwestern University. 'All of math builds on previous math, so you can't really prove new things if you don't understand how to prove the old things,' she said. 'To be a research mathematician, the current practice is that you go through every step, you prove every single detail.' Lean, a software-based proof assistant, can speed up the process, but Granville said it was 'annoying, because it has its own protocols and language,' requiring programming expertise. 'We need to have a much better way of communication,' he added. Could artificial intelligence save the day? That's the hope, according to Shafto. An AI model that could reliably check proofs would save enormous amounts of time, freeing mathematicians to be more creative. 'The constancy of math coincides with the fact that we practice math more or less the same: still people standing at a chalkboard,' Shafto said. 'It's hard not to draw the correlation and say, 'Well, you know, maybe if we had better tools, that would change progress.'' AI would benefit, too, Shafto and others believe. Large language models like ChatGPT can scour the digitized storehouses of human knowledge to produce a half-convincing college essay on the Russian Revolution. But thinking through the many intricate steps of a mathematical problem remains elusive. 'I think we'll learn a lot about what the capabilities of various AI protocols are from how well we can get them to generate material that's of interest,' said Jordan S. Ellenberg, a mathematician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who is part of a team applying for an Exponentiating Mathematics grant. 'We have no intuition yet about which problems are going to be hard and which problems are easy. We need to learn that.' One of the more disconcerting truths about artificial intelligence is that we do not entirely understand how it works. 'This lack of understanding is essentially unprecedented in the history of technology,' Dario Amodei, CEO of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, wrote in a recent essay. Ellenberg somewhat downplayed that assertion, pointing out that electricity was widely used before its properties were fully understood. Then again, with some AI experts worrying that artificial intelligence could destroy the world, any clarity into its operations tends to be welcome. Nelson, the former White House adviser, acknowledged 'legitimate' concerns about the rapid pace at which artificial intelligence is being integrated into seemingly every sector of society. All the more reason, she argued, to have DARPA on the case. 'There's a much higher benchmark that needs to be reached than whether or not your chatbot is hallucinating if you ask it a question about Shakespeare,' she said. 'The stakes are much higher.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store