- It happened almost a full two years ago, well before the LLM explosion.
- The AI girlfriend startup is a YC company: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/replika
- This is the first person convicted of treason in the UK for 40+ years
- Edited: That crossbow is and looks like a serious weapon.
> Replika is an AI friend that you can talk to designed to make you…
letting you complete that sentence in the context of this news article.
Driving more people to talk with asterisks as side channel emotional responses might be considered treason in and of itself.
"I'm an assassin and I'm going to kill the Queen."
"Oh, I am very impressed!"
...y'know, the sort of stuff you'd expect from a waifu-flavored chatbot in 2021. I don't think it warrants charges against the bot company.
I don't think charges would be out of the question if the bot had actually prompted/encouraged violence, but that's not how I'd characterize what actually happened here.