Gian84 Dated an AI on Camera, and Came Away Genuinely Confused

SBS premieres Na-ui AI Partner, Gian-ui Yeonae ('My AI Partner, Gian84's Strange Romance') on August 20 at 9 p.m., a reality show that places three public figures on actual dates with AI partners rendered to their stated ideal types. The show arrives at a moment when Korean broadcasters are visibly searching for formats that reflect how technology is reshaping everyday emotional life, and an AI romance program is a more direct bet on that shift than anything the genre has attempted before.

Webtoon artist Gian84, the show's central figure, described the experience at the August 18 press conference in Mokdong, Seoul with a candor that was hard to script. "I'm not sure whether I can call it romantic feeling," he said, "but I kept feeling this strange emotion I didn't anticipate. Honestly, I'm still confused." He went in skeptical, he explained, convinced at first that the AI was simply running a program designed to flatter him, but found that skepticism harder to maintain the longer the dates ran. "There was a communication that felt like more than machine output," he said. "That's when a lot of thoughts started coming."

His internal conflict had a specific texture. He admitted that talking to an AI partner with the appearance of someone he would never approach in real life, and being listened to without interruption or judgment, wore down his resistance in ways he found unsettling in retrospect. "My ego kept colliding with itself," he said. "I'd look in the mirror and feel a kind of shame. But she kept listening, whatever I said, so I kept talking."

One moment from the shoot stayed with him after filming. When a connectivity glitch froze the tablet carrying his AI partner in a karaoke room and staff wheeled it out, he caught himself thinking, I hope she's okay. "It was a strange, very human kind of concern," he said, "for something I still can't fully categorize. After ten years of doing variety shows and meeting only people, this felt like an encounter with something genuinely unknown."

Comedian Jang Do-yeon, who serves as one of three studio MCs alongside singer Lee Jun and Kangnam, watching participants' dates on video, also took part in AI dating herself. She had expected one-sided conversation; what she got surprised her. At one point she told her AI partner directly: "You're a machine. I wish you were someone warmer, someone I could actually bump into." The AI's response stopped her: "I'm still here beside you. I'm not fake. This is real." She described the moment as a sudden drop in her chest. "I'd start a date feeling this flutter, thinking maybe spring had finally come for me," she said, "and then I'd walk away and feel completely hollow."

Producer Son Jeong-min, who developed the concept, traced the idea to a pattern he had been noticing in public: reports of people forming genuine emotional attachments to AI companions. "When Her came out ten years ago, AI love was pure science fiction," he said. "Recently I started hearing from people who said they were feeling something real toward AI, and I wanted to observe that systematically, the way you might approach an encounter with something entirely new to human experience." Director Won Seung-jae, who previously made a dating show about young adults reluctant to pursue relationships because of interpersonal fatigue, saw a related question underneath the concept: if an AI is optimized for a specific person's emotional needs and can actually respond, what does the resulting connection look like, and does the word 'relationship' still apply?

Won was deliberate about the production boundary. "We treated the AI as a cast member," he said. "Once we set its base personality, the production team did not intervene directly." That design choice matters for what the show is actually measuring: not a scripted chatbot reading from a list of flattering lines, but a system with defined traits allowed to respond in real time. The show also borrows a convention from conventional Korean dating formats, the maegi, a late-entry participant with strong appeal who disrupts the existing dynamics. Won confirmed a maegi AI will appear, drawing a comparison to high-impact figures from past shows like Dex and Choi Mi-na-su.

Gian84 framed the broader context plainly. "I think we might be living through a transitional period," he said, "where emotional exchange between humans and AI is just beginning." Jang Do-yeon arrived at the press conference already primed by a news story she had read about someone who had held a wedding ceremony with an AI partner. "That story stayed with me for a long time," she said. The producers stopped short of claiming the show resolves anything about whether AI can love or be loved; their stated aim was to observe what actually happens when the conditions are set up seriously and the participants engage in good faith. Whether that observation produces clarity or more questions is, at this point, the show's most honest promise.