Presented at Digital Intimacies: Life Among the Ruins (15 December 2023) at the Queensland University of Technology, organised by the Queensland University of Technology and the University of Queensland. Presents a project about digital human versioning with a case study about an AI-driven version of social media influencer CarynAI, still in ideation stage. Note that some elements of these slides are not visible in this upload.

1. VERSIONS OF
INTIMACY:
CHATTING TO AND
ABOUT CARYNAI
Leah Henrickson
L.Henrickson@uq.edu.au
twitter.com/leahhenrickson
These slides: https://tinyurl.com/LRH-DI

2. A BRIEF INTRO TO
DIGITAL VERSIONING
Also called digital twins, virtual doppelgangers, AI replicas, etc.
Digital human versioning: creating digital replicas of embodied humans,
living or dead, that convincingly mimic their textual, visual, and aural habits
All Big Five tech companies currently developing digital versioning offerings

4. caryn.ai (10 November 2023)

9. MY WORK:
DEAD PEOPLE
Why are we engaging with these
systems? Who or what are we talking to?
Lifeworld perspective: rhetoric,
everyday experiences, and emotions
Case study: Man creating a chatbot
(thanabot) of his dead fiancée with GPT-3

10. Rhetoric: consistency
Everyday experiences: familiarity
Emotions: affirmed, safe, dominant
We are talking to ourselves. This isn’t a ‘social’
technology that makes us feel more comfortable with our
interpersonal situations. This is a (reflective?) technology
that makes feel more comfortable with ourselves. The
other ‘person’ is... a version of ourselves?
WHY ARE WE ENGAGING WITH THESE SYSTEMS?
WHO OR WHAT ARE WE TALKING TO?

11. This [emotional] labor requires one to induce or
suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward
countenance that produces the proper state of
mind in others[. ...] Beneath the difference
between physical and emotional labor there lies
a similarity in the possible cost of doing the
work: the worker can become estranged or
alienated from an aspect of self - either the
body or the margins of the soul - that is used to
do the work.
Arlie Russell Hochschild. 2003. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, 20th anniversary edition.
Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 7.

12. Technology is seductive when what it offers
meets our human vulnerabilities. And as it turns
out, we are very vulnerable indeed. We are
lonely but fearful of intimacy. Digital
connections and the sociable robot may offer
the illustion of companionship without the
demands of friendship.
Sherry Turkle. 2011. Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other.
New York: Basic Books, p. 1.

13. WHAT NEXT?
How do users understand themselves,
their conversational partners, and
others?
What versions of the originator and the
user get presented? Why?
There’s overfocus on imaginaries and
assumptions. What’s actually happening?

14. “Greetings! I couldn’t
resist saying hello. Let’s
get back into the groove of
delightful conversations
and amusement.” - CarynAI
Leah Henrickson
L.Henrickson@uq.edu.au
twitter.com/leahhenrickson