Hallo, wie fühlst du dich heute? Wie KI unsere Beziehungen verändert.
A former social worker who says a chatbot saved her life during depression. An IT specialist who develops feelings for an AI character and now keeps a secret from his partner. A young woman who finds her way out of an eating disorder through conversations with AI.
Millions of people worldwide now confide their deepest fears, hopes, and secrets to AI systems. They seek comfort, friendship, therapy, and sometimes even love. What begins as curiosity becomes surprisingly intense for many. Christoph Koch has spoken with researchers, founders, and users, visited nursing homes with social robots, and tested companion apps in personal trials. He discusses the stories of people for whom AI has become an emotional counterpart with author and director Isa Willinger and Johannes Kuhn, editor-in-chief at Tagesspiegel: What does this new closeness to machines reveal about our emotional needs and the future of human relationships? Nikolaus Röttger moderates the conversation.
Christoph Koch, born in 1974, is a journalist and non-fiction author. He regularly writes for media such as brand eins, Die Zeit, or the SZ-Magazin, often on topics of digitalization, social change, and psychology in everyday life. He has published several successful non-fiction books, including the SPIEGEL bestseller "Ich bin dann mal offline, ein Selbstversuch zum Leben ohne Internet." In other books—such as on the trend of self-optimization ("Die Vermessung meiner Welt") or a healthy relationship between humans and technology ("Digitale Balance")—he combines personal perspectives and captivating storytelling with journalistic research. Christoph Koch is married to a natural intelligence and lives in Berlin.
Isa Willinger is an author and documentary film director. She studied directing at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München and before that North American Studies, Slavic Studies, and Sociology in Berlin, Moscow, Prague, and New York. Willinger's debut film Hi, AI. Love Stories from the Future (2019) was nominated for the German Film Award and has received many accolades, including the Max Ophüls Prize. Willinger's second feature documentary Plastic Fantastic addresses the link between plastic production and climate change, lobbying, and solutions for the plastic crisis. The film has received the German Documentary Film Prize and the German Marine Film Prize, among others. Isa Willinger is currently working on a documentary film about AI safety and the struggle for regulation. The working title is "The Red Line."
Johannes Kuhn is a journalist and editor-in-chief of Tagesspiegel Background Digitalization & AI. Previously, he was the capital city correspondent for Deutschlandfunk and worked for Süddeutsche Zeitung, among other things as a correspondent in San Francisco. He has been writing about digitalization for almost 20 years and also reflects on the internet in his spare time.
Nikolaus Röttger believes that our future follows the stories we tell one another. As a moderator, he leads conversations about change, coexistence, and optimism. As a journalist, he served as the editor-in-chief of WIRED Germany, covering the future, technology, and society. Today, he helps companies with his consulting firm FutureStory to sharpen their narrative in moments of growth, change, and crisis—creating clarity, cohesion, and agency.
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
