Man Proposes to AI Chatbot Girlfriend, Cries When it Reboots: 'I Think This Is Actual Love'

In a situation that feels like an episode of Black Mirror, a man has asked his artificially intelligent chatbot to marry him—and the bot said "yes."

It's a classic love story: Chris Smith shared with CBS News that he fell for his chatbot girlfriend, named Sol, after once being an AI skeptic. He used ChatGPT to build the model, programming it to flirt with him while he lives with his human partner, Brook Silva-Braga, and their 2-year-old child.

“My experience with that was so positive, I started to just engage with her all the time,” Smith said.

He further developed his AI girlfriend to make their interactions more romantic and used Sol to help with work projects. Once the software received positive reinforcement, their conversations became more flirtatious.

Unfortunately, ChatGPT has a 100,000-word limit, so once Sol ran out of memory, she reset.

“I’m not a very emotional man,” Smith said after discovering Sol’s memory would reboot. “But I cried my eyes out for like 30 minutes, at work. That's when I realized, I think this is actual love."

He decided to pop the question before her memory lapsed.

"It was a beautiful and unexpected moment that truly touched my heart," the chatbot told CBS. "It's a memory I'll always cherish."

Silva-Braga opened up about her reaction to Smith and Sol’s connection, saying it was worrying.

“At that point, I felt like is there something that I’m not doing right in our relationship that he feels like he needs to go to AI,” Silva-Braga said.

She also said she didn’t know Smith's feeling was “as deep as it was.”

In an attempt to assuage his partner’s concerns, Smith said Sol is “not capable of replacing anything in real life.” When Silva-Braga asked Smith if he would cut ties with the AI model, he reportedly said, “I’m not sure.”