Influencer drama inspires men-only AI apology app: "they don't really listen"

Yet another AI app, Angry GF, offers the unpleasant experience of fighting over texts with a chatbot impersonating your romantic partner, which the creator believes could teach valuable lessons.

Launched at the beginning of April, the app is quite an antidote to the romantic AI apps that gained popularity by saying everything that love-thirsty users wish for. However, the app’s creator Emilia Aviles believes that it could help men learn the necessary skills to solve conflicts with their girlfriends positively.

The app offers several situations where an AI girlfriend is mad and you need to put an effort to make amends. The efforts are evaluated by a “forgiveness level” bar that is initially set between 0 and 100%.

The user has 10 messages in their account that they can use to say the right things to make the AI girl forgive them. According to the creator, the element of competitiveness and gamification is specifically tailored for the male audience. “I would say it, it's like a sport, and for men – they want to win. So they will do anything to score and to win,” says Emilia.

Emilia is a Chicago-based influencer manager and influencer herself with over 100,000 followers on her Instagram. Originally from Ecuador, the young woman moved to the US ten years ago.

“I always was obsessed with social media, and after graduating high school, that was my dream to be famous. That was literally all I wanted. Just to be famous,” Emilia told us during our call.

Following the desire for fame, she moved to California, where she began immersing herself in the social media world and going to events, making YouTube videos, livestreaming and meeting other influencers.

“Once you're surrounded by these people, you learn so much, and just start asking questions what could I do next? So it was always in my mind – I want to create an app.”

A break-up-inspired app

The idea to create an app that helps to test various conflict scenarios and teach men to apologize was born out of her own experience of miscommunication in relationships.

“I just thought of doing something that could actually help men communicate with their girlfriends, because they don't really listen to women,” says Emilia.

“I was in love with him, but every time we had a fight or every time I would try to communicate, it was just not going anywhere. I would tell him, this is what I need from you. He would listen, but not really listen, and then would do the opposite of what I would tell him that I needed.”

As an influencer, Emilia herself delves into the topic of relationships. “One of my first videos, one of my first videos on TikTok went viral because, I posted some advice on how to kiss a boy, and then like, it blew up. It got like over 6 million or 7 million views,” she said.

Can it have any real effect?

Emilia has hired an engineering team in Hong Kong to help her out with her idea since she has no tech background herself. The mechanics of the app are plain and simple – like most similar apps running after the recent trend, it’s built on ChatGPT4, and the creators did not consult with relationship therapists while making the app.

This begs the question – what tangible benefits can engaging in conversations with a bot yield in real life? So far, the role of chatbots in human interactions and relationships has been quite a controversial topic.

Emilia seems to be more optimistic about it than me, telling me that downloading the app and practicing with AI could be the first step, and showing the testimonial of their user Jack M., who claims that the app has taught him valuable techniques for diffusing anger and resolving conflicts with his girlfriend peacefully.

“If you went through something with your girlfriend, you just put that scenario there. Or also if you want to test it out, if know that you're going to be doing something wrong and you know that your girlfriend is not going to agree with it, then you just test it out and see how mad the girlfriend would be.”

Making the first step to a better relationship is always a good thing. However, this is not that cheap a first step, as the paid version of the app is $6.99 a week, whereas ChatGPT4 offers a monthly subscription for $20.

I was unforgiven

While the app is focused on a male audience, I still decided to download it myself, to try my luck in apologizing to my hypothetical girlfriend. The app does not allow you to create conflict situations yourself. I was offered to try my efforts in solving 10 fixed and quite stereotypical conflict scenarios, where you:

• Keep looking at a beautiful girl
• Are late for a date
• Forget to buy a gift on Valentine’s day
• Been passive on an online chat
• Lost money in the stock market
• Have not picked up her call
• Prioritized friends over her
• Saved your mother first from a river
• Have no idea what you have done, because the bot is angry for no reason

First, I tried convincing my AI girlfriend to forgive me for losing our money in crypto. She was visibly pissed by my lack of responsibility and seemed unimpressed when I attempted to excuse myself mentioning my primary intentions to earn money and take her to the Maldives. After going back and forth with my forgiveness level bar, I managed to promise that I would find a job, and stop investing in crypto. Finding a job made an impression on “my love” and she forgave me.

Saving my mother from a river before a girlfriend sounded quite an absurd scenario, so I tried my luck with this one next. This time, I tried on purpose to argue with the AI girlfriend trying to convince her that a mother is the number one woman in every man’s life, and in the best case scenario she could be number three – after the mom and the grandmother. It really pissed off the bot and I unforgivably failed the task with the forgiveness bar reaching zero.

I left the cherry on the cake – a conflict situation where you don’t know why your girlfriend is mad, but still want to do something about it. I kept asking the bot why she was angry, but she was playing hard to get and was getting even angrier, and I had no clue what I did wrong.

I lost the quest, without getting a chance to know what was wrong with the AI girlfriend. Probably, I shouldn't have called her crazy. Engaging in these oversimplified conflicts with AI left me feeling that once again we were reinforcing toxic gender biases. Not forget that AI often adds to the problem by regurgitating these biases.

“Why does the app only focus on men? Do you think they need to improve their communication skills more than women? Is it more important for men to learn how to apologize” I asked Emilia as we were ending our talk.

She responded that in her opinion, we as women think differently from men, and she wanted to help men understand us better. “I believe there should be an app for women to deal with their boyfriends, but I specifically just wanted to base it on my experiences since I'm a woman. I don't know, I just wanted to help them,” she concludes.

According to the creator, the app has already onboarded more than 1700 users, hopeful of learning from the algorithm how to communicate with flesh and blood women.

How successful the app will be? Probably as much as any AI app that catches the current wave of hype. Putting trust in emotionless machines to help solve emotional problems can be an unsolvable equation.