Love Bytes.

Virtual gratification assisted by Reuters

A Russian website called CyberLover.ru is advertising a software tool that, it says, can simulate flirtatious chatroom exchanges. It boasts that it can chat up as many as 10 women at the same time.

On the site it claims that “Within half an hour the CyberLover programme will introduce you to ... girls, exchange photos and perhaps even a contact phone number,"

"Not a single girl has yet realised that she was communicating with a programme!" it said, adding that the programme could also simulate virtual sex online.

The programme, which is also configurable for the male audience , is so far available only in Russian, will go on sale around February 15, just after St Valentine's Day.

On the down side (assuming that the above constitutes an upside) it has been suggested that the programme could be by identity fraudsters trying to harvest people's personal details online and could fool users into giving up personal details.

However this was denied by an employee of CyberLover.ru who in an answer to a question posed by Reuters stated that "The programme can find no more information than the user is prepared to provide,"

I imagine that it will make an interesting change for ‘users’ of some of the these services to have a piece of software as their interlocutor rather than a 20 stone 43 year bloke called Nigel who for reasons best known to himself styles his online identity as ‘Stephanie 19 Bi’.

One can only guess as to what the on screen conversation would look like;

User – Hello
CyberLover – Da 
User – Do you like older men?
CyberLover – Da
User – you feeling sexy?
CyberLover – Da
User – Want to ‘simulate virtual sex online’?
CyberLover – Da
User – Uhh, uhh, uhh!!!
CyberLover – Da, da, da!!!
User – Phew!
CyberLover – Da!
CyberLover – May I have your bankski detailski?
User – No point really, they were on the discs lost by the HMRC so you probably have them already.
CyberLover – Da!