Character.ai, now a unicorn, is developing simulated AI people—you can chat with a contemporary celebrity or a historical figure.
Soon, you will be able to create a digital AI doppelganger of yourself, a model that's trained on your preferences, beliefs, and opinions, simulating your ideas and behavior in any situation.
The AI Doppelganger
The concept of an AI doppelganger revolves around the idea of creating a virtual representation of yourself, capable of expressing your opinions and interacting with others on your behalf.
The first version of this that everyone will benefit from is having your (infinite number of) AI doppelgangers handle tasks like responding to emails, scheduling meetings, or finding time to catch up with a friend, with your AI doppelgangers negotiating and arranging “the menu, the venue, the seating” for your get-together.
But being able to replicate your talents will do far more than this, enabling you to essentially become the CEO of your own mini-company, where you give the direction, but your AI doppelgangers do much of the work and handle most decisions.
Only the most difficult decisions bubble up to you.
People will license out their doppelgangers to work on projects—imagine if you have a startup and could pay a small amount to have a conversation with and get business advice from Sam Altman’s digital doppelganger.
Celebrities, thought leaders, and experts will be able to scale themselves infinitely to consult and work on an effectively infinite number of projects.
So… that’s pretty weird. Here’s what will be even weirder:
AI Dating and Matchmaking
Currently, people are already using dating apps to craft appealing and non-offensive introductory messages.
As AI doppelgangers become more advanced and accessible, the way we interact with potential matches will change drastically.
Your AI doppelganger could swipe left or right on dating apps based on your preferences and tastes. Once it finds a match with another person's AI doppelganger, it will engage in conversations and even go on virtual dates.
All this would happen without your direct involvement, saving you time and emotional investment in the initial stages of dating.
They could even have sex, spend time together, and make commitments, all without your ever getting involved, to find who you’re most compatible with.
But as these virtual relationships, not just dates, grow, who has ownership of the AI doppelganger's experiences and memories? How do we ensure the consent of all parties involved in virtual relationships?
AI as Relationship Smoother
A primary purpose of human technology is to reduce drama, risk, and danger. Sci-fi movies that have people traveling through space or fighting with each other in space are closer to fantasy than our reality.
In the future, robots and AIs will do our exploring and traveling—it’s too dangerous and difficult for humans to do so.
AI doppelgangers will be no different—we will use them to minimize risk and drama in our romantic and family relationships.
Your AI doppelgangers will communicate with each other, negotiate, and simulate many possibilities for how a conversation or decision, or reminder to do your homework, will go.
Fights can be avoidable, defused, and deflected before they erupt.
But our tendency to minimize drama may mask real issues, creating a false sense of security and leading people to disappointment when real-life interactions don’t live up to expectations.
Augmenting Your AI Doppelganger
Today, people are using ChatGPT to adjust their tone and level of formality in their writing. Having a million copies of yourself won’t be optimal if they all face the same challenges that you do. There are advantages to having an assistant who’s pushy even if you aren’t.
You could adjust the qualities and personality traits of your AI doppelganger, or you could get help from another AI.
Just as today it is difficult for couples to work out issues, perhaps their AI doppelgangers will meet with an AI relationship counselor to simulate paths forward and pave the way to relationship harmony.
We may not be so far off from this reality. If there are ways to simulate relationships and help people find others that they can connect with, our AI doppelgangers can be a fantastic way to find and connect with people, bringing our real selves closer together.
Main article image, Midjourney v5: “painterly illustration of a normal human woman looking into the face of her cybernetic doppelganger, staring at each other“