OpenAI’s GPT-4o Isn’t ‘Her,’ It’s ‘Metropolis’

Something people often ask me when I tell them what I cover—platforms, online culture, AI and sex—is whether “AI girlfriends” are coming. I have to break it to them that they’re very much already here. People are in devoted, intimate, long-standing relationships with virtual companions. They’re crafting sexual partners out of large language models. But with the release of OpenAI’s latest model, GPT-4 Omni, all anyone can talk about is how AI girlfriends are going to end the world. They haven’t yet, despite being a thing for years, but people are convinced that this horny voice bot will change things. 

While GPT-40 appears to be, from carefully controlled and scripted demos released by the company, a powerful piece of tech with the ability to process visual inputs, speak with convincing “ums” and stutters, and listen to audio, all anyone is talking about is its voice. They especially note that it sounds uncannily like Scarlett Johansson in the movie Her. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, tweeted “her” on launch day. He also said in a blog post that this version of GPT is like “AI from the movies.” The company has denied modeling the voice after Johansson’s AI companion character in Her, but it’s obvious they know what they’re doing. It’s a warm, demure female voice, with a hint of flirtation. 

Her, as many have already noted, does not end well for the male protagonist. He finds out his AI companion has been “cheating” on him with thousands of others, and then she disappears and he watches the sunset or something (it’s been a while since I’ve seen it). But it’s about as happy an ending as possible: lonely man touches grass.