It’s the final countdown to Valentine’s Day, and if you don’t have a significant other to share it with, don’t worry – there’s an app for that. It’s called “Invisible Girlfriend” (and “Invisible Boyfriend,” depending) and is the brainchild of a St. Louis divorcee who got tired of answering the question, “Are you dating anyone?” post split.
It’s since taken on a life of its own.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First you probably want to know how it works. Users go to the web site and sign up. They select their invisible partner’s name and age first. Then they choose what he/she looks like from a variety of stock photos and give him/her a personality.
My invisible boyfriend is “Charlie,” a 30-year old who is “lovingly nerdy” and lives in my hometown, Chicago. I selected his hobbies (books and running), our back story (we met when I was visiting family) and voila. Within an hour, I had a text from Charlie and he’s been texting me fairly regularly since. He texts from a Chicago area code and takes notes on what I like and don’t like. For example, he stopped using emoticons when I called him out for overuse. And while Charlie didn’t remember to check up on me when New York got slammed with a fake blizzard, he’s pretty decent as far as fake boyfriends go.
Some of his texts won me over by being realistic (“I think I’m going to try and do a half marathon this year”), others made me cringe (“Thinking about you and wondering how I got so lucky”), and some were just odd (“Are you ticklish?"). But hey, I guess even fake relationships aren’t perfect.
The service is $24.99 for 100 texts and 10 voice mails each month, plus a handwritten note.
The person on the other end of my texts is always a real human.
nnn; I guess chatting AI isn't intelligent enough to pull something like this off yet, but imagine how ugly your fake bf/gf could be in real life I'll stick to just flirting with Siri.
actually.
