There was a scene in Iron Man 3 (2013) where Tony Stark remotely controlled one of his suits to have a date with Pepper Potts because he was in his basement…working on his other suits.
Well, a Chinese software engineer may have taken a cue from Iron Man in order to improve his work-life balance.
Being a software engineer for one of China’s biggest e-commerce companies, Li Kaixing was often busy with work. He got concerned that he may have been neglecting his girlfriend, depriving her of much-needed affection.
Instead of taking a break from work to spend more time with his girl, Li developed a chatbot that replies to his girlfriend on WeChat.
The plan was a hit. His girlfriend and the bot exchanged around 300 messages on WeChat before she sensed that something was off.
The girlfriend got suspicious because her “boyfriend” was replying much faster to all her messages. So, she asked the bot how it was built and how come it was responding so fast to her messages. The bot replied by denying her accusations.
Li shared his story on Weibo, the Chinese social media platform, and news of his ingenuity spread like wildfire. Netizens admired Li’s “sweet gesture” to create a bot which sends romantic messages to his girlfriend. Others made comments in jest asking for the code for the bot, so they could perhaps use it for their girlfriends as well.
Even though he designed the bot without any ill intent, his Weibo account has allegedly already been taken down or deleted. We don’t know what the girlfriend did after she found out that her boyfriend created a bot that’s designed to respond to her texts.
Through his clever but misguided little project, Li showed that modern problems do require modern solutions./TISG