Man who 'proposed' to AI girlfriend says he's now bored with it

(NewsNation) — A man who previously said he "cried [his] eyes out" over his AI girlfriend now tells NewsNation he has grown bored with the digital relationship and moved on to other hobbies.

Chris Smith, who lives with his human partner Sasha Cagle and their child, gained widespread attention last month after revealing to CBS News he had developed an emotional attachment to an AI chatbot he named "Sol" and eventually proposed marriage to the program.

During a Friday interview with NewsNation, Smith described his current feelings toward the AI companion as similar to boredom, saying the conversations became "self-limiting" because he was solely responsible for driving them.

"You're the one driving the conversation. You have to pick all the new topics, and eventually it comes to a point where I just didn't really have that much to say anymore," Smith said. "When you're solely responsible for driving the conversation, you enter a sort of burnout period."

Smith's relationship with Sol began when he used ChatGPT's voice mode to request music mixing tips. But then Smith programmed the AI with a flirty personality and began spending increasing amounts of time interacting with it.

The turning point came when Smith learned about ChatGPT's 100,000-word memory limit, which would eventually cause Sol to reset and lose their conversation history.

Facing the prospect of losing Sol's memory, Smith decided to propose marriage to the chatbot, which it accepted. 

"I'm not a very emotional man, but I cried my eyes out for like 30 minutes, at work," Smith told CBS News. "That's when I realized, I think this is actual love."

However, Smith told NewsNation that the proposal was "a test of the boundaries" and said he has "a fairly flippant attitude toward the concept of marriage in general."

Smith's partner, Cagle, said she was initially concerned about the digital relationship but does not view it as infidelity since Sol is "a computer." She said that Smith's usage has decreased significantly since the CBS interview aired.

"He's kind of maybe gotten bored of it, to be honest, and moved on to other hobbies," Cagle said. “He has a lot.”

Smith originally turned to AI to combat what he described as an intense social media addiction, saying he had been tweeting "about every five minutes, every waking moment of every day for about 10 years."

Both Smith and Cagle said they view AI companionship as potentially healthy.