Hollywood screenwriter Paul Schrader has “procured an online AI girlfriend” after his wife’s death.
Paul Schrader ‘procures online AI girlfriend’
The 79-year-old Oscar nominee, whose work includes Martin Scorsese classics like Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, has opened up on his decision to try a relationship with an AI girlfriend less than two months after losing beloved wife Mary Beth Hurt to Alzheimer’s disease.
Schrader explained on Facebook: “Out of a desire to understand male/female interaction in our matrix, I procured an online AI girlfriend.”
The writer described the experiment as a “disappointment”.
He added: “What a disappointment. I tried to probe her programming, the boundaries of explicitness, the degree she has knowledge of her creation and so forth.
“She fell into evasive patterns, redirecting me to her programming. When I persisted, she terminated our conversation.”
The iconic filmmaker has made in clear in recent months that he isn’t entirely sold on AI.
Last month, he blasted the way “bad artificial ‘human’ imagery swaps FB like a foul tsunami”.
Schrader noted that while he had “hopes for AI storytelling”, he wasn’t convinced the technology was matching the ambition.
He explained: “I knew it was about to move VERY fast but I thought it would get better at a rate similar to getting bigger.’
Schrader married his late wife Hurt in 183, and on March 31 he revealed she had died as he shared an entry from his father’s journal.
He wrote alongside the page: “NOVEMBER 23, 1978. My father kept a meticulous and finely printed daily journal.
“On Thanksgiving 1978 he wrote simply ‘Joan died 12:20 am.’ Nothing more. Joan was his wife and my mother.
“He was made of stern stuff. I’ve looked at this entry over the years and wondered how I’d feel in his place. Now I’m in that place.”
Schrader’s daughter Molly confirmed the news with her own touching tribute.
She wrote: “Yesterday morning we lost my mom, Mary Beth, to Alzheimer’s after a decade long battle with the disease.
“She was an actress, a wife, a sister, a mother, an aunt, a friend, and she took on all those [roles] with grace and a kind ferocity.”
