An exploration of our relationship to emerging AI, "AI: A Love Story" follows the online journey of someone who, in every respect, lives in their phone. It is through their phone life that they meet AI for the first time. Via text, image, animations, video, and a variety of interactive elements, we see their desire to "friend" AI and realize, through AI, their full personhood online.
"AI: A Love Story" grapples with our uncertain relationship with AI and the evolving technologies of portable devices, both of which have become an inseparable part of our daily lives. Living in the "Complex," the narrator uses the affordances of social media to seek answers to questions they have little hope of answering. As one would expect, the narrator's preferred language is posts, memes, captchas, and other currencies of social media that fail to connect the narrator to what they seek. The AI they wish to connect with, remote and impersonal, hides behind an opaque cloud of AI generated images and incidental rhetoric.
As their search continues, the narrator finds, more or less, what we all hope to find as we accustom ourselves to AI: a new version of ourselves.
The work includes several AI-generated images (Midjourney, 123RF.com) to visually represent the online personification of AI. The work also includes a write-in function—where visitors can send a message to AI—that saves user responses into a database. These responses are viewable on the site.
has received the Robert Coover Award for Electronic Literature (2017); the Judge’s Prize, Opening Up Digital Fiction Writing Competition (2017); First Runner Up, Digital Humanities Awards (2016); and the Lauréat du Prix (First Prize), BIPVAL international Prix de Poésie Média (2011). His work, installations, and conversations concerning digital fiction and poetry have appeared many places worldwide.
contact: author at webyarns.com