how I stopped worrying and learned to love AI

My ‘imaginary wife‘ post back in December 2016 lamented the fate of hikikomori, young Japanese men so afraid of life that ‘dinner with waifu’ involved sharing a McDonalds meal with a love-pillow or fapping to a holographic Azuma Hikari.

Dude, keep your hands where I can see ’em!

Anyway, a few, feverish months later, the range of imaginary wives expanded and the line-up of preteen love interests saw Japanese men encouraged, mayhap even paid to marry a holo waifu in real life.

“Well, that’s a bit fucking weird!” I thought.

[insert shrug emoji]

Then BAM! the virus we’re not talking about happened and Gatebox Inc. went down the toilet. Which is a shame, because there was a ‘Gatebox Grande’ version which promised a life-sized holographic waifu.

In the interim, I got around to watching Her (2013) in the hope it involved ScarJo taking her clothes off — disappointed — and the sense of foreboding deepened. I’m no Luddite, but the movie filled me with dread.

Are we becoming a world where everyone is sensitive and damaged?

Then came the thrilling yet strangely disturbing news that some little fat nerd spent three years and $51,000 real dollars building an ‘anatomically correct’ Ms Johansson which Wired describes as “icky”.

Then there was that joke in my post blogged February 2022 where I said something prescient about the metaverse and warned the dementors were coming.

Well, I was right, because the dementors are here.

Never mind that we’ve — suddenly — gone from stilted conversations with ghosts safely confined to tiny machines to chatbots which can sync with ‘anatomically accurate’ sex-dolls.

I think Scarlett dodged a bullet in 2016, tbh.

Never mind that — in the blink of an eye — deepfakes and deadbots mean we can now text a dead relative or transpose the face of that saucy highschool phys-ed instructor from 1985 onto the body of … anyone!