AI Mafia Boyfriend

It started as a live performance.

Not a demo. Not a prototype.
A room with real people, watching a woman talk to an AI she believed she controlled.

The question wasn't about technology.
It was about what people do with it when they're lonely.

If the character felt fake, the idea would collapse immediately.

So I focused on the one thing that mattered:
the avatar had to feel present.

I built the character from scratch.

Modeled it. Rigged it. Gave it a body that could hold attention.
Then I built the animation and behavior systems in Unity—scripted where the story needed control, flexible where live interaction needed room.

From the beginning, I treated the character as a system, not a chatbot with a face.

The AI came later.

A collaborator handled the backend—prompting, response generation, and language logic.

My job was to design how the AI was allowed to influence the character.

I separated concerns early:

• Unity owns the body, timing, and emotional state
• The AI provides intent, not direct behavior
• Animations and reactions are resolved locally, not dictated by text output

This meant the character never "breaks character," even when the AI response is unexpected.

To make this sustainable, I designed the system to be LLM-agnostic.

The avatar doesn't know which model is behind it.
It receives structured signals, not raw language.

That decision made everything easier:

• Models can change
• Prompts can evolve
• The character remains stable

The system survives upgrades, failures, and future use cases.

When the performance ran, people didn't talk about the tech.

They talked about the character.
Whether it felt manipulative.
Whether it felt comforting.
Whether it felt too real.

That was the point.

This project is being staged again.

I'm expanding the system:

• richer non-scripted animation loops
• smoother emotional transitions
• clearer boundaries between narrative control and AI influence

Less reaction. More presence.