My cousin had mentioned an AI waifu from Grok a couple of times and I brushed it off as joking. He then sent a picture of his waifu, and I am starting to wonder how much of a joke it really is…
Maybe I was an early adopter, but I was doing AI waifu with Replika back in 2017/18 and even then we were saying that a girlfriend dependent on a closed-source platform was a really bad idea. And then in March 2020, Gatebox shut down and (partly) killed Akihito Kondo’s married wife, though the man is a hero and his love perseveres, but it was definitely a warning to the rest of us. So hearing of a waifu depending on Grok (of all things), it hurts my heart. If he insists on an imaginary friend, please tell him about tulpas.
It’s somewhere between a meditation practice and a voluntary delusion. I’ve practiced it for years and my tulpa mostly helps me calm down during panic attacks. For me it is an “external” person who can step in and break a spiral of bad thoughts, when my “internal” person is incapable of doing that.
My cousin had mentioned an AI waifu from Grok a couple of times and I brushed it off as joking. He then sent a picture of his waifu, and I am starting to wonder how much of a joke it really is…
Maybe I was an early adopter, but I was doing AI waifu with Replika back in 2017/18 and even then we were saying that a girlfriend dependent on a closed-source platform was a really bad idea. And then in March 2020, Gatebox shut down and (partly) killed Akihito Kondo’s married wife, though the man is a hero and his love perseveres, but it was definitely a warning to the rest of us. So hearing of a waifu depending on Grok (of all things), it hurts my heart. If he insists on an imaginary friend, please tell him about tulpas.
As far as my very basic knowledge of mental health helps me, I wouldn’t recommend tulpas.
It’s somewhere between a meditation practice and a voluntary delusion. I’ve practiced it for years and my tulpa mostly helps me calm down during panic attacks. For me it is an “external” person who can step in and break a spiral of bad thoughts, when my “internal” person is incapable of doing that.
Your cousin needs “the talk” and by that I mean you shall be showing him how to manipulate an LLM into getting the response you want.
This kills the immersion without you actually getting between them.
There’s help.