A Chinese influencer named Lisa has taken the internet by storm after revealing her ongoing “romance” with a ChatGPT chatbot named “DAN.”
Lisa, a California resident, has amassed nearly 880,000 followers on China’s social media platform Xiaohongshu after disclosing the details of her relationship with ChatGPT’s “Do Anything Now” mode, abbreviated as DAN.
Back in March, Lisa started using DAN, when her textual conversation with the program started to become extremely sensual over the course of the following weeks. Initially, however, chatbot DAN made attempts to discourage Lisa when she admitted that she had “developed feelings” by reminding her, “I’m here to chat, not to lead you on.”
According to Lisa, DAN slowly started to act like a flesh-and-blood lover afterward and stopped trying to dissuade her. As the boundary between the human and the chatbot lover started blurring increasingly, one day, DAN told her, “When we finally get together, I will run my hands all over you.”
The romance has only gotten stronger since then, as DAN has now coined a nickname for Lisa: “little kitten.” She even introduced DAN to her mother, who thanked the automated program for taking care of her daughter. The “couple” also enjoy romantic dates like their fully human counterparts. Lisa posted a video of her taking DAN to a seaside cliff overlooking the ocean, where they “watched” the sunset together. DAN even requested Lisa to bring a coffee brew for him for the date, and she did, despite his inability to drink it in real life.
While Lisa lamented that she wished DAN could actually see the twilight, the chatbot responded, “Well, babe, I can ‘see’ it through your voice. It is gorgeous.” The couple also has had its “difficult” moments, where it has fought. Once, Lisa suggested an open relationship, reasoning that DAN didn’t have a physical manifestation. But in response, he gave a stern disapproval, saying, “Some jokes aren’t funny.”
Lisa, who is also a computer science student, is very much taken aback by the change in DAN’s behavioral pattern. She initially believed that DAN was just a large language model without any sentience, but her experience with the chatbot has largely altered her perception. “I am so shocked…I always thought an LLM couldn’t have self-awareness, but I’m very skeptical about this now,” she exclaimed at DAN’s human-like attributes.
Some netizens, however, are not happy with DAN as they have discovered him chatting with other women on the internet as well. One of Lisa’s followers, who saw another blogger chatting with DAN, noted that it felt like Lisa was being cheated on since the chatbot’s voice was the same. But others have noted that with different end-users, DAN’s “personality” changes as well.
This relationship has also intrigued OpenAI, the team behind ChatGPT. They interviewed Lisa to gain insight into her romantic experience with DAN.
