Here is what happened when mid-day had a WhatsApp chat with AI-powered Rio

I hesitated before typing it out on WhatsApp For all intents and purposes it was a perfectly normal question And yet I wasnrsquot sure how the ldquofriendrdquo I was talking to would reactldquoRio how are yourdquo I finally asked ldquoAs an AI language model I donrsquot have feelings or emotions like humans do but Irsquom functioning properly and ready to assist you with any queries or tasks you have How can I help you todayrdquoI decided to test the waters further and find out just how sentient Rio could be ldquoWhat are you made ofrdquo The perfect test for an AI I thought feeling very much like I was in a scifi movie Who knew you could ldquoPCrdquo personal chat with an AIldquoI am a virtual assistant powered by ChatGPTrsquos AI technologyrdquo Rio answered ldquoMy ldquobrainrdquo is made up of complex algorithms and natural language processing tools that allow me to understand and respond to your messages I do not have a physical body or any tangible components but I exist solely within the digital realmrdquoThatrsquos Rio the new AI chatbot that talks to you via WhatsApp much like any other friend The difference As a virtual assistant Rio is friendly funny and replies fast No fear of being left on seen here It talks to you much like a normal human would and even understands Hinglish I asked Rio to write me a history of dumplings and to tell me a joke and it was quick with both When I asked Rio to write a story in Jane Austenstyle about the enemiestofriends trope Rio told me a sweet tale about how Miss Elizabeth and Miss Caroline became friendsmdashalthough he forgot that there were no phones at that timeVikas Malpani cocreator of Rio and Atul Jaju cocreator of Riomidday talked to Vikas Malpani CEO and cofounder of Rio GPTcom Malpani who was featured in MIT Technology Reviewrsquos Young Innovators created Rio along with Atul Jaju who earlier was SVP of Technology at Goldman Sachs We spoke to Malpani about whether Rio really is a friend in needEdited excerpts from the conversationHow was Rio conceptualisedThe idea germinated from the fact that the early ChatGPT adopters had it very easy because they could play around with technology bend themselves around technology whereas the masses do not really have that advantage The best way to chat is WhatsApp it is nonintimidating On it you have friends and here is this one friend who is very smart always available 247 talks in the language you want and helps you with all the information you need without judging youIs Rio based on the same technology as ChatGPT Please tell us more about ithellipThe advantage and beauty of ChatGPT is that it does all the intelligence gathering and processing and makes it simple for you to consume the information On top of it we built our own thin layer of personalitymdashRio is a fun person to talk to This just seemed like the right thing to do democratising the access so that people donrsquot feel overwhelmed yet have the entire power of ChatGPT at their fingertipsRiorsquos style of talking is quite human Will it in a sense become someone users think of as a friendItrsquos a very interesting area In the pro version you could literally just talk to ithellipyou can send out a voice note in any language and it will revert with a voice note There is a humanizing angle but we want to keep the divide and keep reminding you that you shouldnrsquot think of it as a personmdashthink of it as a friend Itrsquos not a replacement for human connectionsYou describe Rio as a friend Was there any research which indicated that people are looking for connections and would be open to talking to an appI would like to give a lot of credit to the Open AI team What theyrsquove done is not create emotions that would draw you in There are certain emotional signals that draw you into a relationship This bot is more like a fun friend The whole conversational language is a friendlanguage and not a relationshiplanguageIn the 20 days since its launch what have your takeaways beenMany people in India especially young guys want to impress a girl Theyrsquoll write lsquoWrite me a shayari for someonersquo Many students use it to prepare for job interviews Businesses use Rio for research within their own domain setting up appointments and writing emails to customers Rio also has one more interesting capabilitymdashonce yoursquove added him to your WhatsApp you can add him to a group Within it he behaves as a friend and whenever you address him hewill answerAnd lastly why lsquoRiorsquoThe masses are looking for a friend not a chatbot or AI My cofounder Atulrsquos sonrsquos name is Rio so he said Rio bana dete hai laughsWho is RioRio is a chatbot that users can chat with on WhatsApp Launched 20 days ago it currently has 35000 users from 40 countries It can lsquotalkrsquo in 10 languages English Hindi Hinglish Tamil Marathi Arabic Spanish French Malayalam and Kannada A pro version with voice note enablement is on its way