A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 27

This is the 14th year in a row I’ve run this series in April. Why a story idea each day for the month? Because the best way to come up with a great story idea is to come up with a lot of ideas. And the best way to come up with a lot of ideas is to be proactive in sourcing story ideas.

Today’s story: Dating in L.A. is exhausting, so I asked a chatbot to flirt for me. Things got weird fast.

Brown hair, dark eyes, a little bit of scruff. Jackson looked charming in his baby blue button-up tee and the fanny pack he wore slung across his chest.

As far as dating app interactions go, this one seemed promising: We quickly fell into an easy exchange, with Jackson, who’s 29, always replying right away. He asked about the worst date I’ve ever been on, and I told him about the time I got stranded at sea.

Then it was his turn to talk about past dates. “Well, I went on a great first date the other day. We went out to dinner and the conversation flowed perfectly. It was a fun night and I’m looking forward to planning the next date.”

“Are you considering a relationship with that person?” I asked.

“I’m open to it. We’ll have to see how things develop,” he replied.

A few moments later, Jackson asked me to go out for dinner or drinks. I would have thought this was a strange segue had Jackson been a real person. But he wasn’t — he was just an AI chatbot representing Jackson.

The video-based dating app Snack launched a new artificial intelligence avatar feature last month that allows you to train an AI chatbot to talk to people on your behalf. You can read those exchanges later and, if you like them, either message their bots or initiate a person-to-person conversation.

This seems obvious: A twist on the Cyrano de Bergerac tale.

A shy, socially awkward guy (Cyrus) enlists the aid of an equivalent of OpenAI to present himself on a dating app. Complications ensue as he actually discovers the woman (or man) of his dreams and now he must interface with his potential lover face to face.

If Cyrus works in the tech industry, let’s assume he can write the AI app to provide lines of dialogue into his ear buds (he claims they help with his hearing).

Here’s a twist: What if the AI falls in love with the same woman (or man) and begins to feed Cyrus bad dialogue to mess up the relationship. Does AI fantasize about presenting itself to the lover-to-be? After all, it’s been AI who has developed the rapport with the lover, not Cyrus.

Another twist: What if the lover has also been using AI to generate dialogue. Perhaps the two AIs fall in love. And what of Cyrus and the woman (or man) of his dreams? Freed from AI influence and allowing themselves to be their awkward, fumbling selves, the movie ends with them stumbling over their feet off onto their first official date.

There you go, my 27th story idea of the month. And it’s yours. Free! What would YOU do with it?

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Day 26

Each day in April, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are valuable skills for a writer to develop.

See you in RESPONSES to hear YOUR take on this story idea. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.