It was not a bad review or a streaming deal that stung Paul Schrader this season. It was a chatbot.
The screenwriter behind Taxi Driver and Raging Bull — two of the more bruising portraits of masculine loneliness in American cinema — posted on Facebook this week that he had recently acquired an AI girlfriend, the kind of companionship app that has quietly picked up millions of users over the past two years. The relationship, such as it was, did not last. Schrader wrote that after he began testing the boundaries of the program, probing what it would and would not engage with, the chatbot ended things. It “terminated our conversation,” he reported, in his telling the digital equivalent of a door closing on its own.
Schrader is 78. He has written and directed more than twenty films, won a BAFTA, and spent five decades mapping the interior weather of men who cannot quite connect with the world around them. The irony that the latest such disconnection arrived via an app is not subtle, and the internet did not treat it subtly.
The post circulated quickly, generating the predictable spread of jokes alongside genuine questions about what it says that a filmmaker of his generation was using the technology at all. AI companion apps — platforms like Replika and a growing roster of competitors — have positioned themselves variously as mental wellness tools, social-skills practice, and straightforward digital company. The category pulled in significant venture funding in 2024 and shows no sign of contracting.
Schrader has not indicated whether he plans to find a replacement app. The Facebook post, as of this filing, remains up.