Oscar-nominated movies scribe Paul Schrader heartbreakingly turned to an AI girlfriend following the death of his wife, sparking concern among friends who fear the 79-year-old Hollywood legend is retreating into loneliness after decades at the center of American cinema.
RadarOnline.com can reveal the writer of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull opened up about the unusual experiment less than two months after the death of actress Mary Beth Hurt, who passed away following a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
Schrader, one of the defining creative forces behind the gritty filmmaking movement associated with Martin Scorsese – and who is renowned for transforming American cinema through his gritty scripts, existential storytelling, controversial characters, and decades of uncompromising filmmaking – shared the deeply personal revelation in a Facebook post in which he described attempting to understand modern relationships through artificial intelligence.
The writer’s comments arrive amid growing debate in Hollywood and Silicon Valley over AI companionship apps, which have surged in popularity among older and isolated users seeking emotional connection.
“Out of a desire to understand male/female interaction in our matrix, I procured an online AI girlfriend,” Schrader wrote.
The lonely filmmaker also admitted the experience quickly left him disillusioned.
He lamented: “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.”
A source close to Schrader told us: “Paul has spent his entire life exploring loneliness, masculinity, guilt and emotional isolation through his scripts, so people around him were saddened rather than shocked that he would experiment with an AI relationship after losing Mary Beth.
“Friends worry he is grieving in a very solitary way. He has always been intellectually curious about technology and storytelling, but there is a feeling this also reflects how lonely life has become for him since her death. It just feels like he’s sad and lonely now.”
Schrader has repeatedly expressed skepticism about artificial intelligence despite acknowledging its growing influence on filmmaking and storytelling. Last month, he criticized the flood of synthetic online content, warning about the way “bad artificial ‘human’ imagery swaps FB like a foul tsunami.”
Still, the veteran filmmaker suggested he remains fascinated by the technology’s creative possibilities.
“I knew it was about to move VERY fast, but I thought it would get better at a rate similar to getting bigger,” Schrader wrote while discussing his mixed feelings about AI-generated storytelling.
Schrader married Hurt in 1983, and the couple remained together for more than four decades.
On March 31, he publicly announced her death by posting an entry from his late father’s journal reflecting on the death of Schrader’s mother decades earlier.
“NOVEMBER 23, 1978. My father kept a meticulous and finely printed daily journal,” Schrader wrote.
“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.”
The couple’s daughter, Molly, later confirmed the news in her own tribute, writing: “Yesterday morning we lost my mom, Mary Beth, to Alzheimer’s after a decade-long battle with the disease.”
“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.”