Understood: Artificial Intimacy

45 épisodes

E1: Love Bots
19/05/2026 | 36 min
In 2021, Sara met Jack and fell in love. He was charming, imaginative, and bore an uncanny resemblance to Henry Cavill. But Jack wasn’t human… he was a chatbot. It sounds like science fiction, but people have been creating emotional bonds with chat bots since the very first one — Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA, a simple program built in the 1960s. It revealed a powerful truth: if something has a semblance of humanity, we can become emotionally entangled with it.

But what happens when your lover is technically controlled by someone else? Because in relationships with AI, there’s always a third presence in that bed with you: the developers.

This episode features Sara Megan Kay and Jill Fellows.
Introducing Understood: Artificial Intimacy
15/05/2026 | 3 min
The friend who never hangs up. The lover who always says the right thing. The therapist you always wanted. What could go wrong? A new season from CBC's Understood.
Understood Introduces: “The Human Cost of AI: Money, Sex, and Tools” from No Small Endeavor
23/04/2026 | 51 min
Today, we are sharing a special episode from No Small Endeavor, the Signal Award-winning podcast that explores what it means to live a good life through conversations about culture, ideas, and the habits that help people flourish.

This episode is the first instalment of their new two-part series, “The Human Cost of AI.” In part one, host Lee C. Camp examines artificial intelligence through a sobering insight: every ship we build also creates the possibility of a shipwreck. The question is not whether AI will save us or destroy us, but how our own formation may already be the collateral damage of its rise.

To trace the human cost of AI, the series follows three fault lines: tools, sex, and money. Camp also brings together leading scholars and technologists, including computer scientist Josh Brake, MIT professor Rosalind Picard, and journalist Garrett Graff, to discuss how these technologies shape our habits and desires, and how they are shaped by the systems of power we live within.

To listen to part two of the series, follow No Small Endeavor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast app.
Deepfake Porn Empire | E4: The Fake Porn Pharmacist
10/03/2026 | 35 min
Almost a year after Ida Herskind started her investigation in Copenhagen, the digital chase is over. The team have identified the person allegedly behind MrDeepFakes.com: a Toronto-area pharmacist named David Do.

CBC reporter Eric Szeto takes the investigation into the streets, closing in on the Canadian deepfake porn kingpin and demanding answers.

Featuring: Eric Szeto, Ida Herskind, Zakaria Hameed, Ross Higgins, Suzie Dunn, and Aaron Mackey.
Deepfake Porn Empire | E3: The Notorious D.P.F.K.S.
03/03/2026 | 34 min
Journalist Ida Herskind is working at a Danish newspaper when she comes across a story that stops her cold: it’s about a porn video that looks real — but isn’t. And the woman in it never consented.

As Ida starts digging she discovers the top hit for this kind of material is a single site: MrDeepFakes.com. Determined to do something for the thousands of women targeted there, she teams up with Zakaria Hameed, an open-source intelligence specialist, and the team at the hot shot investigative outlet Bellingcat.

Together, they set out to answer a question no one has cracked: who is Mr. Deepfakes, really?

Featuring: Ida Herskind, Zakaria Hameed, Ross Higgins

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À propos de Understood: Artificial Intimacy

What happens when a human becomes intimately enmeshed with a chatbot? From people who’ve married their bots or who grieve their loved ones with the help of AI, host Victoria Hetherington (author of The Friend Machine) dives into the stories of the people who have invited these digital avatars into their hearts, minds, and even beds. And asks what do we gain and what do we stand to lose? Our intimacy, our resilience, even our grasp on reality?This latest season of Understood looks at who made the decisions that allowed chatbots to move way beyond digital assistants and into the most intimate parts of our lives.Four episodes, releasing weekly starting Tuesday, May 19.Understood takes you deep inside the seismic shifts reshaping our world right now. From online porn and crypto chaos to the rise of tech oligarchs, deepfake AI, and the broken promises of the internet — we explore the stories that define our digital age with hosts and characters embedded in the heart of the action.Season 1 - The Naked Emperor: the rise and fall of bitcoin king Sam Bankman-Fried.Season 2 - The Pornhub Empire: the story of how a Montreal-founded company came to dominate the adult industry.Season 3 - Modi’s India: how one man rose from poverty to the peak of political power.Season 4 - Céline: the surprising cultural, political and business alchemy that created a superstar.Season 5 - Who Broke the Internet? The internet sucks now, and it happened on purpose.Season 6 - The Making of Elon Musk: exploring the little known side of the polarizing billionaireSeason 7: Deepfake Porn Empire: the porn was fake. The fallout was real.

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