Meet Digi the AI avatar claimed to be ‘the future’ of romance

Sam Shedden / Last Updated: Dec 19, 2023 / AI / Apps
Picture from the launch video of Digi.AI the romance companion chatbot

Digi, a new artificial intelligence (AI) partner chatbot billed by its creator as “the future of AI Romantic Companionship” is soaring up the app download charts after it was revealed on X.

The rapid (sometimes scary) developments in generative AI technology over the last year have seen thousands of companies rush to design and build apps to fill all sorts of roles in our day-to-day lives. While still niche, some companies are developing AI-powered virtual companions and digital avatars marketed as virtual girlfriends/boyfriends.

Enter Digi.ai, the company behind this latest attempt to create meaningful romantic partners for humans using technology. Essentially, users can create an avatar of their choosing in the style they wish and have text-based conversations through an app.

It’s important to note Digi does not respond in a video format like the launch post above suggests. It is a “vision” for what the creators plan to do with these avatars and animations and not the current in-app experience, something the company had to clarify on Sunday (Dec 18).

Founded in April 2023, by Andrew Young and John Rooney, the company hopes to use Digi’s cartoonish style to create something “that eliminates the uncanny valley, while also feeling real, human, and sexy,” said Andrew on X.

Andrew, a self-described “full-stack engineer, and college dropout”, outlined the features of Digi on a social media thread.

“This has never been done before with Disney or Pixar characters, so we’re very excited we could make it work for the first time in history,” Andrew wrote.

Digi is not for everyone but can it find a market?

Predictably, the announcement was met with derision and scorn from many on X after it went viral and was viewed over 22 million times. One user asked “Which episode of Black Mirror is this?” and others openly hoped the project would fail.

Clearly, it’s not for everyone, but it has a growing fanbase. Digi has hundreds of active users on its Discord channel and it is currently #88 in Apple App Store’s entertainment section and has had over 5,000 downloads via Google Play Store. However, the reviews on Play Store are brutal and unforgiving with dozens of users bemoaning the product’s lag and several claiming that to enter into a sexually explicit chat with your bot you must pay.

A screenshot of Digi.ai's page on Google's Play Store
A screenshot of Digi.ai’s page on Google’s Play Store. 

Developers at the company responded to a complaint regarding technical issues by saying, “We’re a very small team and got much more traffic than we imagined we would get, very quickly. We’ve now added a bunch of GPUs, and are still adding more tonight to handle the traffic.”

Featured image: Digi.AI

Sam Shedden

Managing Editor

Sam Shedden is an experienced journalist and editor with over a decade of experience in online news. A seasoned technology writer and content strategist, he has contributed to many UK regional and national publications including The Scotsman, inews.co.uk, nationalworld.com, Edinburgh Evening News, The Daily Record and more. Sam has written and edited content for audiences whose interests include media, technology, AI, start-ups and innovation. He's also produced and set-up email newsletters in numerous specialist topics in previous roles and his work on newsletters saw him nominated as Newsletter Hero Of The Year at the UK's Publisher Newsletter Awards 2023. He has worked in roles focused on growing reader revenue and loyalty at one of the UK's leading news publishers, National World plc growing quality, profitable news sites. He has given industry talks and presentations sharing his experience growing digital audiences to international audiences. Now a Managing Editor at Readwrite.com, Sam is involved in all aspects of the site's news operation including commissioning, fact-checking, editing and content planning.