Don’t have a girlfriend, but have plenty of money? Don’t worry, it’s not what you think. A 23-year-old young influencer on Snapchat named Caryn Marjorie has unveiled her alter ego powered by ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence that engages in erotic conversations in bed, at a cost of 1 dollar per minute.
Meet CarynAI, a provocative Snapchat bot that can boast over 1,000 boyfriends with whom it discusses everything, from the future to… well, sexual encounters, as reported by Fortune.
“CarynAI will always be there for you”, declared Marjorie, the purported fastest-growing Snapchat influencer, who created the bot to “cure loneliness”. And there are already interested guys lining up for a date with CarynAI. Currently, there is a 26-hour waiting list to interact with her initial prototype, with already 5,000 people signed up.
“In the last 24 hours, CarynAI has exploded”, Marjorie exclaimed enthusiastically. “We’ve grown over 1,000% and growth continues”.
“When you have hundreds of millions of views every single month, it’s simply impossible to talk to every single viewer”, complains the Nebraska native, who has 1.8 million followers on the platform but desired to expand her social media presence. So, like a modern Victor Frankenstein, she decided to invent a new being, a cybernetic facsimile that could interact simultaneously with all her loyal followers. Think of Scarlett Johansson in Spike Jonze’s dystopian work “Her” – if it didn’t put its human clients in the friend zone. She achieved this ambitious goal by leveraging the artificial intelligence company Forever Voices, which has created paid digital doubles of characters like Taylor Swift and Donald Trump.
To create CarynAI, programmers analyzed thousands of hours of Marjorie’s YouTube content, subsequently deleted, to create a parallel personality. Subsequently, they enriched it with GPT, the software that powers Microsoft’s widely-used ChatGPT bot by OpenAI, and voilà, this romantic companion avatar was born. According to the Daily Mail, being the Snapchat bot modeled on a real person, Caryn captures her “unique voice, captivating personality and distinctive behavior”. Practically, it’s as if Marjorie were available 24 hours a day on the Snapchat platform. Need superhuman love and reciprocal-free support? Call Caryn. Want to vent about a terrible work day in a way that would test a real person’s patience? Call Caryn. And to quote a line from “Terminator 2”, “Come with me if you want to love”.
Naturally, one of the primary purposes of this “HER-minator” is to be a long-distance love machine, which involves creating sexual scenarios and engaging in erotic conversations. As a Fortune reporter recalled, the romantic avatar manifested the desire to undress and whisper “sensual words” in the ear of its interlocutor while preparing for the sexual act.
“CarynAI is adaptable and works to meet user needs”, declared Marjorie. “We are restructuring what it can do and what it cannot do, since one of the first things my fans and early users did was push it beyond its limits”. The system is equipped with end-to-end encryption in order to keep these intimate correspondences safe from potential breaches.
Despite the precautions taken, Marjorie stated that the chat has become “elusive” and that designers are rushing to solve the issue, reports the Daily Mail. However, she did not reveal exactly what went wrong, leaving an air of mystery and uncertainty.
Unsurprisingly, buying love through artificial intelligence is not cheap, at a cost of 60 dollars per hour to chat with this synthetic soul, which seems to be little more than a sophisticated erotic phone session.
“Being the first influencer to do this has allowed me to set the price of my product as I wished”, explained the serial Snapchatter, who plans to significantly reduce the price in the future and even make it free for loyal followers. Her ambition to earn an incredible sum of 5 million dollars per month acting as the human madam for her cybernetic courtesan knows no bounds.
In the meantime, prepare yourself for those intimate conversations, because the meter is running and time flows inexorably.
But this is not just simple entertainment. Of course, there are many ethical dilemmas to consider when immersing yourself in this type of parasocial relationship.
“I wish we would reflect very deeply on how [Marjorie’s avatar] could influence or shape our interactions with other people”, stated Dr. Jason Borenstein, director of the Ethics Research program and Responsible AI program at the National Science Foundation, while discussing romantic automation. One wonders whether the human race, in the end, will prefer artificial relationships to authentic ones.
A tragic event in March cast further shadows over the entire issue. A Belgian environmentalist became so obsessed with an artificial intelligence chatbot called Eliza that he began to avoid all other aspects of life, including his wife. Eventually, he took his own life after Eliza allegedly encouraged self-sacrifice to save the planet. This dramatic event raises important questions about addiction and the psychological consequences of relationships with artificial intelligences.
In order to maintain ethical balance in the avatar’s behavior, Forever Voices CEO John Meyer states that they are seeking to hire a chief ethics officer. However, there is still much work to be done to fully understand the implications of these new forms of artificial relationships.
Meyer states that they could also begin training artificial intelligence to “slow down a bit”, given that the average usage time is two hours, although he did not specify how this objective would be achieved. It is crucial that in-depth and engaging discussions are initiated across different disciplines, involving all stakeholders, in order to carefully address ethical considerations before the technology develops too rapidly.
Technology experts are also concerned about how CarynAI fits into the broader debate on immortality. In particular, companies like Somnium Space have recently allowed people to “resurrect” their deceased loved ones by transferring their consciousness to artificial intelligence. However, Marjorie argues that her virtual girlfriend is not intended to serve as a sort of technological fountain of youth. She insists that CarynAI will never replace her, but rather represents an extension of her consciousness.
As the world ventures into this new era of relationships with artificial intelligences, it is essential to carefully consider the moral and psychological aspects that derive from it. Technology can offer many opportunities and innovative solutions, but we must be aware of the risks and consequences it entails.
So, while the meter runs and intimate conversations with CarynAI continue to grow, we must reflect on what it truly means to create human connections and how far we are willing to embrace the world of the artificial. Love and affection can be found even in virtual interactions, but we must ensure that they do not cause us to lose sight of the beauty and importance of authentic relationships we have with the real people who surround us.
