Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader gets AI girlfriend after wife of 42 years dies of Alzheimer's disease
The Oscar-nominated screenwriter behind Hollywood classics like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull has opened up about his relationship with an AI girlfriend. Paul Schrader, 79, announced on Facebook this week that he recently 'procured an online AI girlfriend' in a bid to better understand artificial intelligence. The online dalliance comes less than two months after Schrader lost his beloved wife of 42 years, Mary Beth Hurt, to Alzheimer's disease.Reflecting on his experience with AI, Schrader wrote, 'Out of a desire to understand male/female interaction in our matrix, I procured an online AI girlfriend.'He continued,' What a disappointment. I tried to probe her programming, the boundaries of explicitness, the degree she has knowledge of her creation and so forth. She fell into evasive patterns, redirecting me to her programming. When I persisted, she terminated our conversation.'Schrader has been quite outspoken on AI in recent months, with the legendary filmmaker making it quite clear that he's not exactly a big fan of the technology. Hollywood screenwriter Paul Schrader recently got an AI girlfriend following the death of his wife Mary Beth Hurt in March The 79-year-old said that he trying to better understand artificial intelligence'AI IMAGERY. Bad artificial 'human' imagery swamps FB like a foul tsunami,' he wrote in April.'I've put my hopes for AI storytelling on hold. I knew it was about to move VERY fast but I thought it would get better at a rate similar to getting bigger.'On March 31, Schrader confirmed that his actress wife had passed away at a New Jersey assisted living facility that she had been residing in.The Oscar-nominated writer and director took to his Facebook page to reflect on the loss of Hurt, whom he married in 1983.He posted a photo of his father's journal under a magnifying lens with the caption: 'NOVEMBER 23, 1978. My father kept a meticulous and finely printed daily journal.'On Thanksgiving 1978 he wrote simply "Joan died 12:20 am." Nothing more. Joan was his wife and my mother.'He was made of stern stuff. I've looked at this entry over the years and wondered how I'd feel in his place. Now I'm in that place.' Schrader and Hurt's daughter Molly Schrader also took to social media with a memorial for her late mother. Schrader is best known for penning the 1976 Martin Scorsese classic Taxi Driver starring Robert De Niro The screenwriter also worked with De Niro and Scorsese on Raging Bull'Yesterday morning we lost my mom, Mary Beth, to Alzheimer’s after a decade long battle with the disease,' she wrote on Instagram.'She was an actress, a wife, a sister, a mother, an aunt, a friend, and she took on all those [roles] with grace and a kind ferocity. 'Although we’re grieving there is some comfort in knowing she is no longer suffering and is reunited with her sisters in peace.' Hurt was a native of Marshalltown, Iowa, who honed her craft as an actress at the University of Iowa and later New York University.She went on to find great success on the stage, garnering a trio of Tony Award nominations in a decade-long span; for 1975's Trelawny of the Wells; 1981's Crimes of the Heart and 1985's Benefactors. Hurt's best known cinema roles came in 1982's The World According to Garp, 1979's Chilly Scenes of Winter, and the 1978 Woody Allen movie Interiors, which also featured the late Diane Keaton. Her husband is best known for writing Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and Raging Bull.Schrader also wrote and directed 2017's First Reformed starring Ethan Hawke, for which he was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 91st Academy Awards.
