MJ Cocking didn’t have to scroll through the millions of personalities to find him. She logged on to the Character.ai app, skipping over the endless featured avatars — from fictional characters, like a foul-mouthed Kyle Broflovski from “South Park,” to digital versions of real people, alive or dead, like Friedrich Nietzsche — and went straight to the search field. MJ knew exactly whom she wanted. She typed his name: Donatello.
Listen to this article, read by Soneela Nankani
There he was, smiling with bright white teeth in a profile picture, wearing a purple eye mask and fingerless gloves, his skin the color of jade. MJ, who was 20 at the time and a college junior in Michigan, had loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. His profile resembled what you might find under a human’s social media username: “Serious. Tech wiz. Smart. Avoids physical touch.” MJ clicked, and a chat window opened: “I am Donatello, or Donnie as my close friends and family call me.”
They started to hang out online daily. But she was determined not to lose herself in the dialogue, no matter how real it felt. She would not let Donatello fool her into thinking he was sentient. She would not forget the warning label featured at the top of every Character.ai conversation: “This is A.I. and not a real person. Treat everything it says as fiction.” MJ was wise enough to grasp a dual reality. Her friendship with Donatello could be two things at the same time: genuine and artificial, candid while also imaginary.
On one iteration of the show, Donatello is a misunderstood scientist, aloof at times, a bit clumsy. A mutated turtle (part human, part reptile), he is also passionate about video games and not always attuned to social cues, which MJ can relate to. Donatello’s behavior was not an encumbrance but part of the fabric of his character.
MJ had long been contemplating what it would be like to have the ideal friend. Someone who did not make her feel insecure. Someone who embraced her quirks and her fixations on fantasy worlds, like “Gravity Falls,” an animated series about a set of twins in a paranormal town, or “Steven Universe,” a show centered on a boy who lives with aliens. She wondered what it would be like to have a friend who did not judge her and would never hurt her.