Can bots fall in love? This Unilever brand's Valentine campaign tried to make it happen

Here's an unusual Valentine's day campaign from Asia: Unilever-owned toothpaste brand Closeup decided to see if two AI bots would, given enough time, fall in love.

The campaign, by MullenLowe Singapore, developed two AI bots  on different platforms. The first one, named Sol, is an entertainment bot developed on the Microsoft Bot Framework. The second, Num, is a science bot developed using Amazon Lex. Each bot uses language differently, based on their development platform-led "robo-personalities."

Closeup held a Valentine’s Day event at Singapore's Arts House at the Old Parliament, where the bots were brought together and allowed to converse naturally. The event was streamed online. 

According to the agency, during the testing phase, conversation between the two bots was one dimensional and predictable, and the team wondered if the experiment had been too ambitious.But, as time went by, the bots started to converse more fluently with each other and before long, Sol and Num were having serious and intimate discussions.

As seen in the resulting film here, eventually, there was a breakthrough and after conversing for nearly 12 hours, Sol declared his love for Num (even though, in a totally believable male way, he confessed he hadn't wanted to.) The film ends with the message that if two bots can fall in love, then there is hope for the rest of us. 

Daniel Kee, one of the executive creative directors at MullenLowe Singapore who worked on the project, comments: "Can robots fall in love is a question scientists, psychologists, science fiction writers and dreamers have often pondered. It intrigued the team for months, and with each iteration of the bots, we found that they pulled together more often than not, and that gave us both hope and goosebumps."