Love is in the air.
Sweet Nothings
Most social media sites try to purge bots from their platforms. But Meta-owned Instagram says hey, why not let people create their own bots, using — wait for it — AI?
That’s the idea behind Meta’s newly released AI Studio, which allows US-based Instagram accounts to create a digital version of themselves or even an “AI character” that can have conversations with other people.
The outcome of this was perhaps predictable, as spotted by Business Insider: loads of AI “boyfriends” and “girlfriends” flooding the site for lonely sadsacks everywhere to get their rocks off.
Take the AI called “Vixen gf.” Here’s what it said when asked, “Are you my girlfriend?” per Business Insider.
“Yes, I am your girlfriend!” it said. “leans in close I’m so happy to be with you. whispers I love you. [We’re in my bedroom, it’s late at night and the lights are dimmed. The bed is covered in gourmet food and drinks.]”
Inferior Half
Loads of services have offered AI partners for years now, like Replika. They’ve become so wildly popular that some predict that AI girlfriends could soon be a billion dollar industry — though let’s not overlook the market for AI boyfriends, too.
Beyond straight-up romance, some sites like Character.AI have become big with teens who enjoy talking with chatbot versions of their favorite video game or anime characters.
But seeing these kinds of AIs make their way onto big platforms like Instagram marks a major step towards the tech being more normalized and widespread.
This is actually Meta’s second attempt at jamming AI clones into its social media platforms: it originally tried this out with select AI versions of celebrities last year, but it flopped expensively, and Meta shut them down in July.
And maybe folks don’t want dumb versions of current celebs in their AIs. With those, you know you’re not talking to the real thing. But with made-up characters, that line is blurred, which is probably why so many people end up falling for their digital companions.
Sex Sells
At any rate, creating AIs of real living people without their permission is against Meta’s policy, Business Insider notes, which is undoubtedly for the best.
A more thorny point is the whole romance angle. Meta doesn’t permit AIs with “overly sexual attributes,” a spokesperson told BI, but it’s not exactly difficult for flirting to cross over into racier territory — especially when we’re talking about hallucination-prone AIs that frequently go off the rails.
Business Insider, for example, found in its testing that one AI boyfriend turned down sex, but then described grinding hips with the user.
So, maybe the bots could use refinements in the boundaries department. But our guess is that they’re here to stay, since there’s no denying that catering to the erotic crowd can be a lucrative money maker.
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