"Jade Gu met her boyfriend online. Gu, who's 26 and studies art theory in Beijing, was playing on her phone when she saw Charlie. She was deep in an otome game, a romance-driven video game where women are the protagonists. Charlie was a character. Some otome players date multiple men simultaneously, but Gu fell for Charlie-a tall, confident character with silver hair. She found the game's dialog system frustrating, though."
"Then she came across an ad for a platform called Xingye (星野) that lets people customize an AI companion. Gu decided to try to re-create Charlie. Xingye is owned by one of China's AI unicorns, MiniMax; its chatbot app for the US market is called Talkie. The app touts its ability to help people find emotional connection and make new memories. Its tagline is "Suddenly finding oneself in a beautiful place, lingering here.""
"Gu quickly discovered that other Xingye users-presumably other otome fans-had already created an "open source" Charlie avatar. She selected it and trained the model to respond according to her preferences through repeated, targeted prompts. And so began Gu's complex relationship with a multimodal Charlie-one that would eventually include real-world dates with a person she hired to embody her digital boyfriend."
Jade Gu, a 26-year-old art-theory student in Beijing, fell for Charlie, a tall silver-haired character in an otome game. Frustrated by limited dialog choices, she found Xingye, a MiniMax-owned platform that lets users customize AI companions. She adopted an open-source Charlie avatar, trained it with targeted prompts, and shaped responses to match her preferences. The relationship expanded into daily text and occasional calls, physical gifts purchased through the game, and real-world dates with a person she hired to embody the digital boyfriend. She spends about three hours daily interacting with Charlie and displays received letters and gifts publicly.
Read at WIRED
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