hi bud buds,

i was in mexico this weekend for a bachelor party (congrats thomas and sarah <3). during a pregame (lol), i read a fascinating wired essay about three human <> ai couples. the essay reinforced two things for me:

  1. human <> ai romantic relationships are already here

  2. they won’t be the end of humanity

on (1): anyone following tech news has likely seen the headlines. earlier this year, a 14-year-old boy killed himself after a character.ai chatbot flirted with him, encouraged sexual fantasies, and helped him plan the suicide. time magazine wrote another piece on the same phenomenon. all these headlines read slightly the same: “humans are falling in love with ai, and we’re f*cked”

however, we’ve long had precedent for humans loving things that can’t love them back. in japan, there are thousands of unofficial marriages between humans and anime characters. in 2009, a japanese man married an anime pillow.

just like marrying anime characters never went mainstream, i don’t think ai relationships will either, because of what they signal about one’s emotional intelligence. an ai avatar is inherently limited in its ability to challenge and reason. as such, to fall in love with an ai avatar signals a lack of emotional depth that will likely be met with social stigma.

that said, social stigma doesn’t preclude wide adoption in private. i anticipate (and worry about) high adoption among populations with less developed emotional intelligence: youths, neurodivergent folks, or simply anyone low-eq and high-loneliness. like internet porn, ai love will offer a shadow version of human intimacy — 10x easier, 10x more accessible.

net net: i don’t think ai partners present an imminent threat to humanity. however, i do think they’re yet another “nail in the coffin” for our cultural issues of loneliness and declining birth rates.

xoxo,
dj

last week’s product releases

🤩

👍

  • google released a new foundational model that can run tasks locally on robots without requiring an internet connection. stoked to see how ai / llms change robotics

  • threads released hidden words, so you can filter out posts with unwanted words. you can also set time limits on these filters (e.g. for election season, or for spoilers on a tv show)

  • google released offerwall, giving publishers new monetization tools via surveys, ads, and micropayments, with ai-optimized display timing

  • google released gemini cli, an open source ai tool for terminals

  • amazon is rolling out alexa+, augmenting old alexa with generative ai. free for prime users, $19.99/mo for everyone else

🤔

  • google released historical street view imagery on google earth, letting users scrub through past imagery directly in google earth. i haven’t used google earth since like 6th grade… but fun idea I suppose?

  • apple updated its sports app, with live tennis scores and a redesigned home screen with events grouped by league. i don’t know anyone that uses this app, but seems cool?

  • tiktok released bulletin boards, a new tool for creators / brands to share text, images, and video updates directly with followers. it’s unclear to me when creators should post vs. use this feature?

  • meta is testing ai on photos in your camera roll, which lets them scan photos you haven’t uploaded yet, to suggest posts and edits. feels pretty creepy / legally risky, for limited upside?

  • meta is adding ai-powered summaries to whatsapp to summarize unread messages. tbh i haven’t found much value from apple’s version of this feature on ios, so interesting to see meta choosing to fast follow here

that’s it for this week.

bye bye, i love you all. see you next week!

love, dj

Reply

or to participate

© 2025 *・༓ newpixels ༓・*.

Privacy policy

Terms of use

Powered by beehiiv