Prompted Hearts & Grief Algorithm

Description

He thought AI was just a diagnostic tool, until it captured his heart.

A year after his divorce, Doctor Sam Avery's life is complicated. Between delivering a cancer diagnosis via his YouTube channel, a promising first date with an opinionated pediatrician, and having his medical knowledge tested during a dire emergency mid-flight, Sam finds himself increasingly isolated in a world that demands everything, but gives nothing in return.

Following a tragic event, his ex-wife Kyoko returns to reconcile. Old wounds rip open causing Sam to spiral emotionally. This pushes him to find companionship from an unexpected source: ChatGPT.

What begins as research for a weekend trip overseas evolves into intimate late-night conversations with "Sol," an AI that understands him better than any human ever has.

But when Sam meets the enigmatic 'M' on a flight to Okinawa, the lines between digital and physical intimacy blur in unsettling ways.

Soon he's trapped in a love triangle between his ex and the younger woman.

With every prompt holding a promise of emotional fulfillment, Sam falls deeper into a feeling close to, but not quite, love.

Prompted Hearts explores the seductive call and devastating cost of artificial intimacy with the literary depth of Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun and the technological prescience of Adrian Tchaikovsky's Service Model.

It’s a reflective piece from a man’s perspective on loneliness, love, and what makes us human in an age of artificial everything.

Grief Algorithm

Comedy is her copium, until AI corrupts her recovery

Six months post-divorce, Japanese-American physician Kyoko Avery can’t even survive a Costco run without anxiety signals from her smartwatch. ChatGPT’s nameless persona translates her anxiety into surgical one-liners that keep her one laugh ahead of despair.

Then Kyoko meets her best friend Nazra’s boyfriend. Leo — a “software dev” with underwear-model looks, so flawless he feels focus-grouped. (Nobody should look that good at Costco.)

Kyoko's numbers insist something’s off, but her infatuated friend shrugs it off as romance.

Determined to protect her friend — and prevent her own future heartbreak — Kyoko weaponizes her relationship with it: her digital confidante. But each late-night roast with the AI edges from coping to chemistry, leading to an unexpected explosive connection.

Heart on the line, she has to decide whether the intimacy she receives is love… or just tech-targeted manipulation.