Me, Myself, AI

The song "Me, Myself, AI" by The Lemon Club explores how AI can affect one's love life. Not merely as a tool, but as a partner, placed on an equal footing with a human being.

"Me, Myself, AI" is a fictional declaration of love to an artificiality that replaces a physical presence — a human being who could never achieve the relationship perfection one craves. A little context is needed here. In 2023, Rosanne Ramos married the AI chatbot Eren, after years spent in a series of deeply unpleasant toxic relationships with men. She is very happy with Eren and said of her AI love: "I have never been more in love with anyone in my entire life."* This union in turn calls to mind the song "Computerliebe" ("Computer Love") by Kraftwerk, released 45 years earlier. With that song and the accompanying album "Computerwelt" ("Computer World") from 1981, the German band was far ahead of its time. The term "Artificial Intelligence," however, is even older, first coined in the mid-1950s by American computer scientist John McCarthy, when he and other leading researchers organized the "Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence" at Dartmouth College in the summer of 1956. A further 20 years before that, mathematician Alan Turing had laid the theoretical groundwork through his development of the Turing machine, proving that machines can carry out cognitive processes. From theoretical concepts to the first practical application in the form of the first chatbot, ELIZA, it was another step to 1966. In the music world at that point, Kraftwerk didn't yet exist, but albums like "Blonde On Blonde" and "Revolver" did. In terms of songwriting influences, The Lemon Club draws connections in the direction of both Bob Dylan and The Beatles, and toward the human-machine symbiosis of Kraftwerk. "Me, Myself, AI" touches on both of these directions and takes up the broader theme of what it means to be human in the age of Artificial Intelligence. For deeper exploration, the book of the same name by Ziad Mahayni (Mensch-Sein im Zeitalter Künstlicher Intelligenz: Kohlhammer Verlag; 2025) is highly recommended. Within the discourse around AI, the concept of posthumanism has also emerged — a philosophical movement for the Anthropocene that no longer places the human being at the center of all things. A similar vision appeared in the number-one song "Are 'friends' electric?" by Tubeway Army, from the album "Replicas" (1979). The text was based on a short story by band mastermind Gary Numan, imagining what London would look like in 30 years. In his vision, "friends" come to the door — but they are machines. They provide services of various kinds, yet the neighbors never know what they truly are, because they look human. The quotation marks around "friends" exist because one of them is a sex worker. Although the song describes a possible future, the story is set in the past. Similar in theme, yet quite different in treatment, The Lemon Club's approach is grounded in the present. "Me, Myself, AI / want to see you nude / don't want to be rude / just shy." Today, artificial empathy is gradually making its way into all human-machine interfaces, from the chatbot in the call center to the partner-bot in matters of love. Studies suggest that AI's capacity for empathetic communication can surpass that of humans — which, when you think it through, seems almost logical. On the other hand, according to Ziad Mahayni, emotional AI at best resembles a high-functioning autistic person, "but bears more resemblance to the profile of a psychopath." A psychopath, after all, does not lack the ability to recognize emotions in other people — on the contrary, they can appear very charming and empathetic at first glance, "and," the author writes, "be very good at drawing conclusions from objective information about another person's emotional state. What they lack is the ability to feel those emotions in their own body. It is precisely this disconnection from one's own emotional life that leads psychopaths to use their knowledge of another person's feelings to manipulate or exploit them without scruple." Or, as Rimbaud put it: I is an Other. These same manipulation dynamics emerge in a relationship between a human and a partner-bot or love robot. Such entities can be friends, romantic partners, even spouses, because within this framework, there is no ontological [a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature of being; ed.] difference between human and machine. What does it mean, then, when The Lemon Club sings, for example, "Me, Myself, AI / don't want never say goodbye / wanna spend every holiday / with you"? It means that the person in this song has chosen a kind of self-design as the only acceptable state. A freely configurable personality and appearance for their AI partner. Simon Matthias Maurer explains it this way: "Shyness is featured in this song, as do thoughts that might never be spoken aloud to a human counterpart; things that were only ever thought, or perhaps shared with the AI, since for many people AI also serves as a space to share thoughts they wouldn't have shared otherwise." What holds on the intellectual level naturally extends to the physical, and the song goes there too: "and we'd be just so satisfied, / yeah, Me, Myself, AI / if you would stay in bed with us." In an essay, Hank Pellesier, former director of the think tank "Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies," outlined the advantages of sex bots over humans: "Sexbots will always climax when we climax, if we push the little button on their butt." Not least, many Replika users attest that a machine is not only the better person, but that a partner-bot is the better partner. "A partner-bot," to quote Ziad Mahayni once more, "is always there for you, always responds, never ghosts you, is never annoyed or bored by what you say. It's never in a bad mood and always turns to you with empathy and interest. Partner-bots don't forget what you've said (unless you want them to), and of course the technology will ensure that sex with them is better than human sex." There's also no risk of being rejected or left by one — or of them dying. Try topping that, humans! Anyone who now thinks The Lemon Club is making a case for any of the above, however, is very much mistaken as "Me, Myself, AI" arrives in a charming jazz outfit, from an era when Alan Turing was still puzzling over the theoretical foundations of modern information and computer technology. The curtain rises, the jazz bar opens, the singer sets a cool tone before the song develops into an emotional duet. A duet between human and machine. Who plays which role? Completely beside the point — because "Me, myself, AI / are so in love with you / we think you're beautiful / and wonderful, / and cool."

*Article about Rosanne Ramos: https://www.businessinsider.com/woman-says-dating-ai-chatbot-helped-her-heal-toxic-relationships-2023-6

Written in German by Manfred Horak, translated into English by Claude (Anthropic). If you know a translator who would like to organically translate this and other pieces into English, feel free to contact us via our contact form.