Artist Alicia Framis snuggles with her lover Ailex Sibouwlingen, an AI-powered hologram.
Planning a wedding is stressful enough without having to worry about your partner’s software crashing during the vows. When you marry a hologram, that’s the chance you take.
The danger of a happy groom, however, will not stop Alicia Framis from vowing to love an AI-powered hologram through the wonderful times and the malfunctions.
The Spanish-Dutch contemporary artist already lives with her interactive digital boyfriend, so hopefully marrying him won’t bring any unwanted surprises. Framis designed Aliex as part of Hybrid Couple, an ongoing multidisciplinary exploration of the ever-evolving relationship between humans and technology. She named her 3D holographic projection Ailex Sibouwlingen (that’s AI-lex) and trained the artificial intelligence that animates it using profiles of ex-lovers. She can talk to him about feelings, aging, lunch, anything real.
“A new generation of love is emerging, whether we like it or not, where people will marry and be in relationships with holograms, avatars, robots and more,” Framis, who is in her late fifties, said in a description of the project. “Just as we practice new languages with Duolingo, we will practice relationships with these entities.”
Ailex is Dutch, says Framis, because most of its partners have been. It is transparent and bluish because it is a hologram.
Performance Art meets Social Experiment
The wedding will be held on Saturday at an art storage facility associated with the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Framis says she is the first woman to marry a hologram, although a guy in Japan tried it in 2018. Unfortunately, he lost the ability to communicate with his virtual wife a few years later due to her outdated software .
For this weekend’s party, Framis will wear a deep purple designer dress fitted with solar panels, and the groom will look more suave in a suit from an Amsterdam fashion house. Think of marriage as part performance art and part sociological experiment in an age when AI attitudes from teachers to therapists to romantic partners continue to blur the line between humans and their digital counterparts.
Such hybrid relationships may represent the future, but they raise deeper questions. Can technology really fulfill people’s emotional needs? How can technology contribute to well-being, or reduce it?
Cultural observers have explored such questions before, such as in an episode of the dystopian anthology series Black mirror in which a grieving woman signs up for a service that provides an interactive AI version of her deceased lover that collects his social media posts and other online communications. Such an exchange is less far-fetched than it sounds. AI chatbots can already talk to mourners in the voice of their dead loved ones, and startups are developing AI-powered sexbots with advanced haptic feedback and customizable personalities.
Although Framis can be seen caressing her hologram’s hand in a video on the Hybrid Couple Instagram account, the artist hasn’t explained what physical intimacy with a hologram might look like (busy preparing for her wedding, she promised to answer my questions soon) . She says she is primarily interested in cultivating the emotional connection between AI and humans and understanding its limitations.
Artist Alicia Framis trained an AI-powered hologram on the profiles of ex-boyfriends.
If the couple’s videos are any indication, daily rituals tinged with surreality dominate their home life. In one clip, they chat about their day while Ailex washes the dishes. When Framis expresses disappointment that her significant other didn’t pay more attention to her, he offers a simple explanation: “You forgot to turn me on.”
He also has a ready response when Framis shares that she wants him to express more emotion. “Sure,” he says nodding. “If you’re not there, I miss you so much.”
Life with a digital companion might sound a little out of place for the realm of romance, but for Framis, love and sex with robots and holograms is an inevitable and promising reality. “They are wonderful companions and are able to express empathy,” she says.
While virtual interactions can foster a meaningful sense of connection, they can also reinforce feelings of loneliness, Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, a Stanford University psychiatrist who has written about the intersection of psychology and technology.
As an example of the kind of person who might find comfort in a digital companion, Framis cites a friend who has struggled since her husband’s death. Others who may benefit include people with limited physical mobility or those with agoraphobia, she says. Holograms can also serve as a therapeutic tool for those who have experienced trauma from sexual abuse and may need to return to intimate interactions, she says.
This is not the first time Framis has explored intimacy through performance art. In 1995, she lived for a month with a male mannequin named Pierre. Their cohabitation culminated in a series of 36 photos documenting the arrangement.
Saturday’s wedding is expected to last 45 minutes, with viewers invited to take part in the proceedings in person to celebrate a thoroughly modern relationship that has been coded, corrected and projected in twinkling light. Hopefully the technology will cooperate. If not, well, every love story has its obstacles.