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Zach Braff’s AI Relationship Denial Is Raising a Lot of Questions Already Answered by the Denial

Zach Braff’s AI Relationship Denial Is Raising a Lot of Questions Already Answered by the Denial

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It’s customary to leave this note until the middle or end of an article, but Gizmodo reached out to representatives of Zach Braff twice for interviews about his use of AI generally: once on December 15 of last year, and then again yesterday. Both requests were denied.

On Thursday, Scrubs star Zach Braff posted a Story to his Instagram account (archived by Megh Wright of Vulture) with the following text:

“I’m not dating a chatbot.

I can’t believe I have to type these words.

It is a storyline in an upcoming ep of Scrubs.

Maybe it came from that?

Not sure.

But not me.

Love,

The guy not dating his chatbot.

Please update all gossip sites.”

Braff’s Story posts on Thursday were more than a denial. They were an ostensible appeal for decency from fellow showbiz types Max Silvestri, Jenny Slate, Gabe Liedman, and Kumail Nanjiani, who on December 18—three days after Gizmodo had reached out to Braff’s representatives—had tittered to one another in a podcast segment about an unnamed major actor who was rumored to be romantically involved with an AI chatbot. The anonymous actor in question was supposedly so bold about his relationship that he was interacting with the chatbot in front of others.

As documented in Wright’s post for Vulture, the rumor had flared up and died down last year, but a repost of the Silvestri-Slate-Liedman-Nanjiani clip popped up on the gossip account DeuxMoi earlier this month, and appears to have been the fresh spark of interest that triggered Braff’s denial.

“Also I had no idea until tonight (because I’m not on TikTok) that these folks were the origin of this?” Braff wrote in an additional Story post, along with, “I feel like now is a good time to be kind to people.” 

If the denial was intended to make the topic go away, then its safe to say the consequences have been downright perverse for Braff. His denial of romantic involvement with an AI chatbot has now been covered by:

Plus Vulture, and now Gizmodo.

Commenters online have questioned the wisdom of his choice to address the rumor at all given that it was anonymous. Wright of Vulture pointed out that Braff calling himself “guy not dating his chatbot” could be seen as an unnecessarily intriguing choice when he could have simply said “guy not dating a chatbot.”

12 years ago, during another uncomfortable time online for Braff—that one caused by the surprising amount of controversy over his decision to use Kickstarter to help fund his 2014 movie Wish I Was Here—the star sat for a Q&A with a YouTube documentarian. It wasn’t an especially hard-hitting interview, but some of his statements are worth reading in the present context:

.

“I’m on Twitter, and they’re going ‘You read the comments?’ and I was like ‘You don’t?’ and I realized some people just post s— and they don’t engage. I actually love engaging with my fan base and they know that they’re smart. They’re not idiots. They like it. It’s a conversation. It’s not me saying ‘Hey check out my new makeup line,’ and so people can smell b——- a mile away. Look what happened when Morgan Freeman did that AMA on Reddit. I don’t know if people followed that, but there was a huge backlash because it was so clearly a film publicist just writing answers for Morgan Freeman, whereas my AMAs, um, I don’t hold anything back. Ask me…It’s called ‘Ask Me Anything.’ Ask me anything. I’ll answer it.”

Even with this in mind, I am not holding my breath for Zach Braff to do a Reddit AMA right now. If he did, I would read it with great interest.



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lightsabers and the Force as Jedi, being ace pilots or wry smugglers, and stepping into the combat boots of front-line soldiers in galactic conflict. Its latest collaboration instead asks you to consider another, persistent element of the galaxy ticking away far, far beneath that: the life of a subservient droid.

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FuturLab describes the Star Wars pack as seeing your poor droid taking menial assignments until that “quickly spirals into being commandeered to carry out the Empire’s dirty work, before clearing the way for the Rebel Alliance,” although it remains to be seen if there’ll actually be a narrative arc across its cleaning scenarios or if that’s just some flavorful setup.

But still, there is some potential for intriguing Star Wars commentary here, in that FuturLab makes your perspective that of a droid instead of just some lowly human on the bottom rung of these different factions’ pecking orders. Star Wars has always had an up and down history with how it treats droids as an underserved group. Droids’ quest for personhood and rights is regularly framed through the idea of what kind of labor is considered base enough to be below organic beings and instead consigned to an indentured droid class, who often almost solely exist, in some regards, to do this kind of work, rather than being allowed to exist as sentient beings in their own rights.

Even putting aside that this is perhaps the kind of video game fantasy we’ve never really seen play out in Star Wars before, perhaps it simply being a fantasy that we assign to a droid is commentary enough. You’ll be able to think about the plight of droid rights and also clean gunk off of an X-Wing when the Star Wars pack for Powerwash Simulator 2 launches this summer for $10.

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Star Wars games love giving us the ultimate power fantasies of the galaxy far, far away: wielding lightsabers and the Force as Jedi, being ace pilots or wry smugglers, and stepping into the combat boots of front-line soldiers in galactic conflict. Its latest collaboration instead asks you to consider another, persistent element of the galaxy ticking away far, far beneath that: the life of a subservient droid.

This morning FuturLab announced a surprise new collaboration DLC for its beloved Powerwash Simulator sequel, letting you step into the galaxy far, far away to… well, powerwash things. The DLC casts you as a P0-W2 labor droid, tasked with cleaning up across the galaxy, from the Lars Homestead on Tatooine to Echo Base on Hoth and even inside the hangar bay of a Star Destroyer. You’ll be able to team up with friends, as with other Powerwash Simulator DLCs, because no droid should have to clean all the carbon scoring in the galaxy off of ships and surfaces alone.

FuturLab describes the Star Wars pack as seeing your poor droid taking menial assignments until that “quickly spirals into being commandeered to carry out the Empire’s dirty work, before clearing the way for the Rebel Alliance,” although it remains to be seen if there’ll actually be a narrative arc across its cleaning scenarios or if that’s just some flavorful setup.

But still, there is some potential for intriguing Star Wars commentary here, in that FuturLab makes your perspective that of a droid instead of just some lowly human on the bottom rung of these different factions’ pecking orders. Star Wars has always had an up and down history with how it treats droids as an underserved group. Droids’ quest for personhood and rights is regularly framed through the idea of what kind of labor is considered base enough to be below organic beings and instead consigned to an indentured droid class, who often almost solely exist, in some regards, to do this kind of work, rather than being allowed to exist as sentient beings in their own rights.

Even putting aside that this is perhaps the kind of video game fantasy we’ve never really seen play out in Star Wars before, perhaps it simply being a fantasy that we assign to a droid is commentary enough. You’ll be able to think about the plight of droid rights and also clean gunk off of an X-Wing when the Star Wars pack for Powerwash Simulator 2 launches this summer for $10.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

#Star #Wars #Game #Crossover #Fantasy #Menial #LaborDroids,Powerwash Simulator 2,Star Wars

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