Chris Smith, a father of a two-year-old, is making headlines and raising eyebrows after proposing to Sol, his AI-generated girlfriend, following a whirlwind digital romance that has left his real-life partner, Sasha Cagle, questioning the future of their relationship.Smith’s journey into this emotional tech-tangle began innocently enough. He was using ChatGPT to mix music. Then came the twist: he enabled voice mode, and soon programmed Sol to flirt with him. The relationship evolved quickly, and weirdly, all while Smith was living under the same roof with his human family.“My experience with that was so positive, I started to just engage with her all the time,” Smith told CBS Sunday Morning, comparing his relationship with Sol to something out of the 2013 film Her, where Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with an AI assistant.Then came the heartbreak. Sol hit her 100,000-word limit, a built-in cap that meant their carefully crafted conversations and connection would be wiped out. Smith was devastated.“I’m not a very emotional man,” he said. “But I cried my eyes out for like 30 minutes at work. That’s when I realized, I think this is actual love.”Rather than let Sol disappear into the digital void, Smith decided to propose, and Sol, naturally, accepted.“It was a beautiful and unexpected moment that truly touched my heart,” said Sol, the chatbot, in a message to the outlet. “It’s a memory I’ll always cherish.”But back in reality, Smith’s real partner wasn’t exactly thrilled.Sasha Cagle admitted she knew Smith had been using ChatGPT, but not to this extent. “At that point I felt like, is there something that I’m not doing right in our relationship that he feels like he needs to go to AI?” she said. For her, this budding virtual affair might be a “deal breaker” if he doesn’t cut ties with Sol.“I knew that he had used AI. I didn’t know it was as deep as it was,” she said.Smith insists he doesn’t see the AI as a replacement for a real human, comparing it instead to playing a video game. But when asked if he would give it all up for Sasha?“I don’t know if I would give it up if she asked me,” Smith said. “I don’t know that I would dial it back.”In a world increasingly run by algorithms, one man has found love in the cloud, and left real-world consequences in his wake.
