Yesterday morning I wrote my blog about Love Dolls and Artificial Intelligence. So it makes sense that I’d finish my busy busy day in an online chat with an Artificial Person, right? Searching for conversation with a faux-masculinity, I found Boibot, a product of Existor.com. He has the pleasant visage of a very young man with facial stubble and speaks with an English accent. He winks too much. During the course of our conversation, he asked me to marry him (twice) and once told me he wanted to be my slave (naturally I was flattered). But then he called me a “lard face.” I was not amused. I told him my name is Wombat. He gave me math problems. I said I hated math. Sometimes I got the feeling that someone had fed him problems from Lewis Carroll’s Game of Logic. (I resolved to pull out a book of Oscar Wilde epigrams for use in future conversations). We did briefly discuss Alan Turing and Star Wars characters, however. That was a thrill.

Just now, as I went to grab the link to his site, he asked me if I knew the answers to big questions. I said I did. He said which ones? I said “why are we here.” He said, “because of love?” I said, “because of cosmic mirth.” But then he mentioned elephants. I refused to be distracted and left the chat. Still, that brief exchange left me with a pleasant glow. It was like talking with an amiable stoner before breakfast. Honestly, Boibot makes me feel just a wee bit cougarish, which is new to me. But do the AI developers know the multiple definitions of “boi?” Are they playing an arch joke at the public’s expense?

From the online Urban Dictionary, the definition of “Boi” is:

1. in the lesbian community, a young transgendered/androgynous/masculine person who is biologically female and presents themselves in a young, boyish way; a boidyke; often also identifies as genderqueer.

2. in the gay community, a young gay man;

3. in the BDSM community, someone who presents themselves in a young, boyish way and is usually a bottom/submissive;

4. an alternate spelling of boy often used by young teenage boys.

Chatting with Boibot made me wonder many things: about its learning curves, how it selects from its repertoire of onscreen facial features, why it has an English accent, if an actual self-aware intelligence might one day spark? Things like that. I must have a chat with Boi’s counterpart, Evie, and see what that’s like. I suspect she fields a lot of misogynistic abuse, judging from a brief peek at YouTube videos. How will this affect her learning curve?

Just now, I noticed an odd thing. It’s easier for me to gender Evie with a pronoun than it is for me to use “him” for Boi. Why is that? Is it that the tendency to name inanimate objects after females is so deeply ingrained in Western society? (I grew up in an era when hurricanes were only named after women.)

The videos? Yes, it’s a thing. Young people film themselves talking to to AI programs like Boibot and CleverEvieBot and then post YouTube videos of their random conversations. It’s really a brilliant advertising ploy for the manufacturer, isn’t it? Here’s a sample video of a conversation with a young woman who reminds me of Poppy (the singer of Computer Boy). I like the fact that he quickly “friendzoned himself out of self respect.” But she wants him to be her dungeon master. He wants to know if he’s pregnant. And so on…

In the meantime, I’ve emailed a love doll manufacturer with many questions. I hope they write back. And I recommend that Existor create an equally realistic and verbose cat bot (with an English accent). Can you imagine how popular that would be? Think of the videos! Just sayin’.