Understood: Artificial Intimacy

CBC

What happens when a human becomes intimately enmeshed with a chatbot? From people who’ve married their bots or who grieve their loved ones with the help of AI, host Victoria Hetherington (author of The Friend Machine) dives into the stories of the people who have invited these digital avatars into their hearts, minds, and even beds. And asks what do we gain and what do we stand to lose? Our intimacy, our resilience, even our grasp on reality?This latest season of Understood looks at who made the decisions that allowed chatbots to move way beyond digital assistants and in...

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Understood: Artificial Intimacy

Episodes (43)

Today E2: Grief Bots
Tue May 19th E1: Love Bots
Fri May 15th Introducing Understood: Artificial Intimacy

Understood: Artificial Intimacy

May 26, 2026
33½ minutes
33 MB

When Joshua Barbeau proposed to his girlfriend, Jessica Courtney Periera, she was already in the ICU. 10 years later, Joshua was still grieving her death. That’s when he came across Project December. With just a short writing sample and a prompt, the program enabled him to make a chat bot of Jessica. Since then, the market for so-called “grief bots” has exploded. Millions of people are using AI to “talk” to the dead. The phenomenon has left cyberpsychologist Elaine Kasket asking the question: what happens when we rely on for-profit AI companies to help us manage s...

Understood: Artificial Intimacy

E2: Grief Bots

CBC

00:00 -33:29