“ok. ok. i can do this,” the man tells the bot. Orchid responds, “you can’t. that’s why i’m here.”

The AI assistant informs the woman that the husband did end up making plans for their anniversary and that “he thinks he planned it himself. he’s very proud.”

This Orchid AI assistant is another in a growing list of artificial intelligence bots that are built to replace the natural parts of human relationships with an automated overlord. It is reminiscent of the “Friend” AI necklace that would listen to every conversation you had so you could ask it what you might have forgotten. 

Just like the Friend AI necklace, Orchid aims to substitute the ease of a nonconfrontational existence for the friction of everyday life.

In a relationship, confrontation is often necessary. In the case presented in the Orchid ad, the husband is not living up to the just expectations of his wife, and she should call him out on that. To let an AI assistant subtly tell the man to fix his behavior, then gloat that it tricked him into thinking it was his idea, is subhuman behavior. If a man cannot remember on his own that the day is meaningful, then it is not actually meaningful to him.

Commenters on both sides of the political aisle were appalled at the messaging in the advertisement.

Alex Hirsch, the creator of the animated show Gravity Falls who often speaks publicly about his left-leaning political opinions, expressed disappointment in the comments of the advertisement’s post on X.

“This s*** makes me want to kill myself,” Hirsch said.

“Impressive to create an ad so deeply and profoundly repulsive, so howlingly bleak, so wrong on every level,” progressive British comic book writer James Roberts said about the ad in a post on X. “It makes you want to peel off your own skin.”

Although these are rather extreme takes on the new AI assistant, they speak to the fact that it’s not just the so-called right-wing “crunchy,” health-conscious influencers upset about replacing real human interactions and relationships with engineered ones.

According to the Orchid website, “Orchid is your personal assistant, the kind of help that used to be reserved for a lucky few. It quietly handles your email, your calendar, your meeting prep, and your travel, so you can focus on what actually matters to you.”

At its core, Orchid wants to let you offload the tedious parts of your work or life so that you can “focus on what actually matters to you.” What this looks like in the advertisement is a woman offloading the unpleasantness of confronting her husband about what is likely his deficiency, so that she can go to work while he stays home playing video games. 

Not only does the advertisement degrade the meaning of relationships, which experts are beginning to say are better if untouched by AI, but it also reinforces the idea that men are couch potatoes who play video games while their motivated wives actually get the job done.

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This advertisement for Orchid AI is likely engineered to play on the rage of those who oppose it — thereby getting more attention for itself. It is still worth commenting on because of what the company behind Orchid chose as their target demographic: insufficient, lazy, and incompetent men with busy but unbothered wives who have better things to do than work out the issues in their relationships. 

Orchid AI is not meant for a human. It’s meant for those who aren’t human enough.