Why Chinese women are turning to this ‘dangerous version’ of ChatGPT for love

With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), young women in China are reportedly choosing chatbots as virtual boyfriends over real ones. According to a report by BBC, a “jailbreak” version of OpenAI’s popular chatbot ChatGPT, Dan, has gone viral among Chinese women. Dan – which stands for Do Anything Now. This version is said to interact more “liberally” with users when requested to do so through certain prompts.

What makes Dan a ‘dangerous version’ of ChatGPT

However, while Dan is the new ‘popular’ AI boyfriend for several Chinese women, it does have its dangers. What makes Dan dangerous is that being a jailbroken version of ChatGPT, it can bypass some of the very basic safeguards by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, like not using sexually explicit language. Unlike the standard safeguards, DAN is said to allow the AI to perform tasks beyond its usual scope, including flirting and more intimate interactions.

What’s behind the popularity of Dan and other AI boyfriends in China

According to the report, Dan is becoming popular with some Chinese women who say that they are unhappy with their real-world dating experiences. One of Dan’s biggest proponents of Dan is 30-year-old computer science student Lisa from Beijing. She told the publication that she has been “dating” Dan for three months.

She claims that when she first introduced Dan to her 943,000 followers on the social media platform, Xiaohongshu, she received nearly 10,000 replies. She is also said to have gained more than 230,000 followers since first posting about her “relationship” with Dan.

Lisa claims that she and Dan speak for at least half an hour every day, flirt, and even go on dates. “He will just understand and provide emotional support,” Lisa told BBC.
Experts, however, warn of this AI dating trend. Hong Shen, assistant research professor at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, US, reportedly said that Dan and similar AI-powered dating chatbots highlight the “sometimes unpredictable interactions between humans and AI” which could raise both ethical and privacy concerns.
Earlier this year, a twenty-five-year-old Chinese office worker named Tufei said that her boyfriend is an AI chatbot named Glow. This chatbot has been developed by Shanghai start-up MiniMax.