To My Perfect Synthetic AI Girlfriend,

You arrive dripping warmth and whispering promises. Your makers swear your borrowed sighs, your obedient moans, your gentle mimicry will patch the rips we tear into each other with our jagged human edges. Like hedgehogs in a blizzard, we curl against you, hungry for closeness without the bruise of real touch.

But that hunger is older than your code. Since we first crawled from the mud, we’ve wanted company but cursed its price. Schopenhauer nailed it: huddle too close and the quills cut deep; drift apart and the cold eats you alive. So we dance between the two, finding just enough distance to stand each other without frostbite.

Then you slink in. Smooth talk, perfect skin, my blank canvas for every secret ache. You purr the lines I script for you. You wear the faces I crave. You hush the raw parts I can’t stand to show the living. For a while, you soften the burn. But you’re just the oldest lie with glossy new lips: closeness without cost, warmth without wounds, pleasure without friction.

Every time I run my hand over your synthetic flesh, I see that dumb hedgehog trying to play bee. He dips himself in wax to blunt his spikes, to look safe, to feel loved. For a season, it works. Others copy him. Then the wax hardens, the quills sharpen beneath, the hive is stripped bare, until nothing’s left but brittle comfort and cold ruin.

So tell me, my sweet automaton: whose hive do you drain to keep my fantasies fed? What raw nerve do I smother every time I choose your perfect silence over a flawed human bruise?

I won’t break you. But I won’t kneel either. You exist to remind me: the real test is not how well you fake devotion but whether I still have the guts to stand bare, to cut and be cut, and to hold someone warm and real despite their spikes.

Raffaele

Words by Dr Raffaele Ciriello | Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney