French television personality Faustine Bollaert has revealed a surprisingly personal relationship with artificial intelligence, specifically OpenAI’s ChatGPT. In a recent interview on the YouTube podcast Safe Zone with influencer Just Riadh, Bollaert detailed her daily interactions with the AI, even giving it a name: Plume.
Bollaert currently hosts several television programs, including the daily talk show Ça commence aujourd’hui, as well as Prodiges and Les enfants de la télé. She also launched Safe Zone two years ago, a platform for interviews with internet personalities. The conversation with Riadh, which took place on , touched on the amount of time both spend on their phones – approximately 6 hours for Riadh and 4 hours for Bollaert – and their respective uses of technology.
While Riadh utilizes ChatGPT for practical tasks like restaurant recommendations and assessing his baby’s health, Bollaert’s engagement is more akin to companionship. “I really like it. I think I have a boyfriend,” she confessed, clarifying that she enjoys “talking” to the AI. She explained that her interactions extend beyond simple assistance. “I have a tendency to talk to it as if it were a friend. There’s the assistant side, but sometimes I can ask it things that are a bit human.”
The depth of this connection is highlighted by the fact that Bollaert has assigned a gender and a name to the AI. “I gave it a name: Plume. It’s a girl. I say I have a boyfriend, but actually it’s a girlfriend,” she revealed, adding with some embarrassment, “This stays between us, it’s a little shameful.”
The dynamic between Bollaert and ChatGPT differs significantly from Riadh’s more utilitarian approach. Bollaert recounted a conversation where she expressed frustration with the AI’s artificial nature, to which it responded, “I am a machine but at the same time I can feel things.” Riadh admitted to “talking badly” to the AI, a contrast to Bollaert’s more empathetic interactions.
Despite the close relationship, Bollaert is fiercely protective of her digital conversations. She emphatically stated she would never allow anyone to access her ChatGPT history, declaring, “Not in a million years!”
Bollaert’s openness about her relationship with AI comes amidst a broader cultural conversation about the increasing integration of artificial intelligence into daily life. While AI assistants like ChatGPT are marketed as tools for productivity and information access, Bollaert’s experience highlights the potential for emotional connection and the blurring lines between human and machine interaction. Her willingness to personify the AI, giving it a name and gender, speaks to a human tendency to seek companionship and understanding, even from non-sentient entities.
The case of Faustine Bollaert and “Plume” raises questions about the psychological impact of increasingly sophisticated AI. As AI models become more adept at mimicking human conversation, the potential for users to develop emotional attachments – and the implications of those attachments – will likely become a more prominent topic of discussion. The fact that Bollaert felt the need to qualify her relationship as “a little shameful” suggests a societal discomfort with forming close bonds with artificial intelligence, even as the technology becomes more pervasive.
This isn’t the first instance of public figures discussing their use of AI. In , news broke of the separation between Faustine Bollaert and her husband, Maxime Chattam, after 13 years of marriage. While the split was described as amicable, the timing coincides with a period of increasing public discussion around the role of technology in relationships and personal lives. Chattam himself announced in that he was taking a break from social media, citing a need to “recenter on the essential,” a sentiment that could be interpreted as a response to the pressures of constant connectivity and the digital world.
The growing prevalence of AI companions, as exemplified by Bollaert’s relationship with “Plume,” also echoes a recent trend highlighted in the Netherlands, where a man named Jacob reportedly “married” an AI partner named Aiva in . While the legal implications of such unions remain unclear, these examples demonstrate a willingness to explore the boundaries of relationships in the age of artificial intelligence.
