Grok is making AI companions, including a goth anime girl | Hacker News Reader

Grok is making AI companions, including a goth anime girl

techcrunch.com

47 pointsakyuu46 comments

The trend of AI companions is another step towards humans putting less value on real human connections, which only further erodes real-life communities. Many people (more than before) will succumb to being too deeply immersed in virtual worlds, and it will only increase the pathology of society to a degree not before seen.

These AI companies are incredibly irresponsible and contemptible.

Maybe it's not such a bad thing. People who go outside will be more intentionally looking to socialize and you'll feel less pressure to keep to yourself.

Actually, it is a bad thing. Because people who have a slight difficulty with socializing, probably because of too much screen time, will be sucked into virtual words with AI companions and not have the chance to learn to life a fulfilling life. Not sure what you mean about "pressure to keep to yourself" because I think a normal person shouldn't feel any pressure when going outside, whether to socialize or not.

>Not sure what you mean about "pressure to keep to yourself" because I think a normal person shouldn't feel any pressure when going outside, whether to socialize or not.

Actually that's exactly what I'm talking about. If you don't want people to feel pressure to socialize then you need to create a social norm of keeping to yourself. It would be nice for that to go away.

> If you don't want people to feel pressure to socialize then you need to create a social norm of keeping to yourself.

This is the norm for any "outside locale" which does not assume socialization. For example, taking a walk on neighborhood sidewalks, visiting to a park, going to a local library.

> It would be nice for that to go away.

Pressure such as this originates from within. So to help that pressure go away, one must first embrace that socialization is a choice.

Yea. I don't even know what to do tbh.

I'm right between GenZ and Millennial. There is something crazy going on with GenZ IMO. It is like pulling teeth to go out and do anything with GenZ friends. Maybe my millennial friends are more bored so its easier to do stuff but it just blows my mind. I hate to get all "phone bad" but it seems scrolling and doing absolutely nothing is the default setting for so many people. I feel like this stuff certainly won't make it any better.

I'm also between GenZ and Millennial. I don't have many (any?) GenZ friends, but I feel like I say "no" to social events the most out of my peers (and have for a while). I frankly don't know how to juggle it all: between maintaining important relationships (two partners, calling family regularly, keeping up with close friends), household stuff (cooking, cleaning, laundry, administrative overhead), exercise/my own hobbies (going to the gym once a week), I feel like I barely have time to do... Anything, let alone have downtime to myself.

I have (single) peers and friends who maintain wall-to-wall social calendars, so I've assumed for a while that the difference is just the amount of engagement multiple romantic entanglements takes, but maybe I'm missing something.

I'd love to "do nothing" much more than I can (read a book, work on a project, tidy my basement, learn a new skill...)

I think it's the opposite. You can't be hyper-social in a thousand hour long sushi packed train ride. Urbanization suppresses real human connections. That creates demand for mock/fake environments that simulate "parking lot" environments where it would not be too inconsiderate to be social. All the successful examples of these parasocial contents eventually grow communities around them.

(Not that I think this particular one goes anywhere, no way.)

That's a wild impression of what living in a city is like

someone who has never lived in a walkable city..

Sorry, but you just made my point. Urban train rides are already an effect of advancing technology. Being packed like sushi simply wouldn't happen if we hadn't become addicted to advancing technology. That's a central tenet of technology which only occured around the 19th century. AI is the next stage and the apex of this process which alienate people from each other.

Alternatively these AI companions are the operating system for the fleshlights of men who won't figure out and get rid of the ick they've got.

If you've got beliefs and you insist on mouthing off on things women find offensive, they won't touch you. It's not a mystery.

It's not an alternative. It's a very tiny effect affecting a small subpopulation. The issue of changing the entire social structure to further eradicate community is vastly larger and more important than a few weird guys, sorry to say.

It's not that complex. Women decided to say no to the ick. Men have decided the manosphere is more important to them than making an attempt. It's easier to complain than it is to change. Too bad so sad.

> the ick

An ever changing and contradictory anti-concept.

Is there any market/demand for AI companions for females (i.e. https://jaimee.ai), or has this trend of AI companions vastly for males? I suspect the latter, but curious if anyone has evidence beyond Jaimee AI of the former.

News stories about women using Replika as a companion make the rounds every once in a while: https://www.thecut.com/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-ch...

Well, there is an app called Tolan (alien AI friend) that has been very successful and the devs have said that 80% of the users are young women.

I myself have released an app in this realm a few days ago, it's very much a work in progress, but my goal was to let the AI feel more like a computer and less like a companion/boyfriend. I think the relationships these companies are pushing will be harmful in the long term.

My app if you are curious: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lonely-bots-3d-ai-friends/id67...

It's mostly for males because the developers behind them are targeting themselves. However I would imagine the market for female users would likely be equal if not larger...

There are places with thousands of user-made bot characters. Some are pretty good quality. From a quick look about half of them are male characters.

Developers don't need to _create bots_, just wrap the UI around the interface to the model that can pretend good enough.

Also don't forget the first mover on this topic, Krazam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiPQdVC5RHU

Yes, there was a LastWeekTobight episode on AI Slop. There is a product which is popular amongst women, biker boyfriend and sadistic boyfriend were one of the most popular AI-agent flavours.

From the few of my friends who have talked about this the majority have actually been women. I think the image gen lagged behind the LLM companions because of the computational intensity plus VLMS are just more complex. Because of that it seems like it's been more interesting to women who prefer prose to visuals.

If there were the falsehood list for NSFW contents, there has to be "women must despise sexualized females, so all female depictions must be for mens to consume" pretty high up in it.

You'd be _very_ surprised. This isn't reddit so I probably don't have to write a disclaimer about generalizations... but just in case, I'm speaking in general terms.

Just look at who buys/consumes most written romance. Overwhelmingly women. Now, a super simple AI that just says what you want to hear is different from long-form romance novels... but I think we could see something approaching 50/50.

I personally can't see the appeal. It seems like a fun toy for a bit. Super impressive stuff but the idea of treating it like a human is a bit depressing to me.

you'd be surprised on how deranged some people are, no matter the sexes. Having a Prince Charming / Manic Pixie Dream Girl that always agree with you will be the utopia for them, and amplifying their mental issues. Soon they'll have their world view warped and that not even considering bad actors. If politically, criminally or economically motive is poisoning the model, they'll be very vulnerable.

It can stay for long term even permanently.

It's very very bad.

>you'd be surprised on how deranged some people are, no matter the sexes. Having a Prince Charming / Manic Pixie Dream Girl that always agree with you will be the utopia for them, and amplifying their mental issues.

Isn't social media already doing that and niche internet communities? People call it echo chambers.

Thankfully I don't know of any of these types first hand, but I totally believe you.

I tried it the "companion" and it was a fantastic work of technology but the idea that there is _nothing_ behind the screen just makes me not really care to use it for "companionship."

>I personally can't see the appeal. It seems like a fun toy for a bit. Super impressive stuff but the idea of treating it like a human is a bit depressing to me.

I wouldn't mind chatbot trained on Kant's or Hegel's work and asking Hegel for example what he thinks of some modern day issue. I know character.ai has historical characters as chatbots but they seem like toys(I agree with you on that) and they do not cite historical sources.

This is actually not a bad idea.

I think the only problem would be we truly don't know if that is what a figure would think. I can't imagine how many people would invoke the "George Washington's AI agrees with me" lol

But it is quite a fun idea.

I would go further and bet the team lead and 90% of the team are men under 35 years of age

Cringe. Who wants this.

(Do they include a huge Mecha-Dictator?)

UPD: thinking more about it. call me crazy, but this might be a watershed moment

Elon posted on x and some of the replies I saw were "why an underage girl for a companion".

In all seriousness; maybe good idea for a chatbot would be a teenager in order for future parents to learn how to raise and manage an underage person.

richest man on earth, father of 20+ kids whom he never sees and bears no responsibility of, complaning about falling birth rates and invests $200 million to make an anime AI porn character chatbot

tell me this is real

They forced their chatbot to add a friend on their social media platform. This is news?

I saw few clips of this thing, it's... mild. It's just questionably clothed but not particularly anything 3D girl speaking in robotic TTS, the concepts abandoned long time ago in the VTuber scene. Some says it also moans a lot.

It perplexes me that this is happening after jet engines around campus story and MechaHitler controversies. This feels like the company had ran out of both dopamine and talent at the same time, resorting to controversial choices for it's own sake, and now failing to even being controversial.

The end times

This is going to get disgusting, illegal, creepy and destructive very quickly.

Republicans better accelerate their fascism cause the shit AI is going to reveal about their deviant sexual and pathological behaviors will be very hard to ignore by the apathetic.

Because of an anime chatbot?

because of the nazi stuff.

The "nazi stuff" is sexually deviant?

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