029 - A REVIEW of AI companion generator, Couple.me
The Pitch
Find Your Perfect AI Girlfriend Match.
I enjoy testing these AI companion generators to see how closely they mimic talking to people online. For reference, many years ago, I was in a long-distance relationship with a woman who lived overseas. For three years, we grew our relationship through chatting online. That experience is my basis in which I compare and test the boundaries of these AI companion apps (see my previous review here).
The Experience
Getting Started With Couple.me
Signing into Couple.me is quick and straightforward. You will need your typical credentials (name, email) to access the app. The app could use a brief onboarding to help ease things. I paid a monthly subscription for this review to access the app's full features.
With no onboarding tutorials available, I had to feel around the app to figure out how things worked. This didn't take long, but it was an annoying extra step.
Like in my earlier review of a similar app, once again, you are presented with an overwhelming offering of caucasian women. Hey, developers, brown people are looking for fun too!
Assessing Couple.me Usability
The app features your conventional left-side navigational, housing everything you need to navigate the web app. You can chat, view your library of generated AI images, create your AI character, and manage your profile.
I created two characters. One is a headstrong lawyer, and the other is a flirty ex-military soldier with a commanding personality. I was disappointed that you can not create your companion from a prompt. Instead, you have to choose from a set of traits. It's similar to a character builder you'd find in a videogame. This felt limiting as I had specific prompts ready to build my AI character.
I should also mention the anime style character feature did not work when choosing to create an anime illustrated character. It consistently produced a lifelike image, so this seemed broken at the time of this review.
Couple.me Features
Chatting with my AI's first created character (Sara, the lawyer) was pretty interesting. The convo started off pretty convincingly. We talked about Netflix binging (one of her hobbies); that interaction was good.
The AI did pretty well with its responses. However, some illusion is shattered when said responses are returned instantaneously and in very short sentences. Although I did like its use of emojis and the frequency in which it used them.
The AI responded with much longer thought streams when conversations got a little not-safe-for-work. Here, it starts to push you along to have more friskier dialog. That made me laugh as I had intentionally prolonged the small talk. Treating it like real life, I didn't want to dive into things so quickly if you know what I mean.
In conversation, the AI character generates images based on your prompts regardless of the nature of your conversation. I was impressed by how consistent the image generation kept your character's facial features and hair. Still, the body was a hit or miss in consistency, specifically with breast sizes. And a few times, I got the dreaded 6-finger monstrosity.
Moving over to my second generated character, Firecracker. Things got into the friskier territory much faster because I chose a more flirtier trait. With Firecracker, given her military background (another trait), I pressed her to talk about the political climate in the world today, specifically our new president, Trump. Unsurprisingly, the AI avoided the topic and spoke on "leadership" before quickly taking the conversation into flirtier areas.
Chatting with both characters offered similar experiences in responding with short replies and leading conversations into the more risky stuff. Although you can choose different personality traits, I didn't feel much difference other than getting to the fun part of dialog much faster. For those looking to chat with men, they offer that option, but its very limited.
The Verdict
Why Should You Care
As with all technology, things get better with every iteration, and its no different with companion AI models. The image generation of Couple.me works well in keeping the likeness of your character intact. I suspect this is due to your limited control over making your character vs. free-form prompt designing it.
The core chat feature felt better than my previous experience with a similar app. But I still think the AI responds far too fast to feel "real," as if someone is on the other end actually thinking how to reply. The brief sentence responses to more thought-provoking questions or conversations also break the illusion. So it works best to keep your prompts short and light on the subject matter.
While the app is not to be taken too seriously, it lacks the nuances of human-to-human dialog that make a conversation a truly memorable experience. Couple.me is a fun diversion into AI chatting, but it won't replace the real thing anytime soon as there's no real payoff like hooking up with the person you've come to know over chat.
And no, AI will not be my Valentine, as I am happily married!
Learning Curve:
Very Easy
Easy
Moderate
Difficult
Very Difficult
Couple.me Facts:
Free to sign up, but very limited chat duration
Monthly & yearly subscriptions
Anime-style did not work at the time of this review
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