A Snapchat influencer partnered with an AI company to produce a chatbot clone of herself which she says can “fix social issues” associated with men’s loneliness.
Caryn Marjorie, who has nearly two million subscribers, launched the voice-based chatbot with the AI company Forever Voices.
“Men are told to suppress their emotions, hide their masculinity, and to not talk about issues they are having,” Marjorie tweeted.
“I vow to fix this with CarynAI. I have worked with the world’s leading psychologists to seamlessly add [cognitive behavioral therapy] and [dialectic behavior therapy] within chats. This will help undo trauma, rebuild physical and emotional confidence, and rebuild what has been taken away by the pandemic.”
The chatbot’s website describes itself as a “virtual girlfriend” which allows Marjorie’s fans to “enjoy private, personalized conversations” with the program that has been trained on thousands of hours of her social media videos.
In its beta testing phase, the chatbot had over 1,000 subscribers who paid $1 per minute to chat, generating $71,610 in revenue in its first week.
According to an update from Marjorie, the chatbot now has over 10,000 subscribers, who she referred to as her “boyfriends”.
Ethics Researchers Appalled
Irina Raicu, director of internet ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, said the chatbot’s claims to be beneficial amount to a cash grab.
“These kind of grand claims about a product’s goodness can just mask the desire to monetize further the fact that people want to pretend to have a relationship with an influencer,” she said.
She also expressed concern that its claims of curing loneliness could actually have the opposite effect, saying it adds a “second layer of unreality” to often unhealthy relationships between influencers and their fans.
“These are claims that AI researchers have been trying so hard to combat, to tell people this is absolutely not what such tools do even if the language now is sounding like there’s sentience behind it,” she said. “There isn’t.”
As if “the Intelligence Branch” doesn’t know enough about each and every one of us already! If dudes fall for this type of propagandized interrogation, manhood is not their worst chink. And they won’t have any of THAT left, if they had any to begin with. Guys!, take your place in Creation! We were made in God’s Image, commissioned and fitted to have DOMINION over His Creation! That doesn’t mean violence and anger, but pride and dignity in God. Work Out! Learn! Control yourselves with Self Control. Be A Man!
It seems to me that these “lonely men” would do much better spending their hard-earned money “chatting” with an actual psychologist or counselor.
This just appears to be ~ like the article says ~ a money grab by a so-called “influencer,” and while I’m on the subject…anyone who is “influenced” by a total stranger talking at them from a screen is NOT a friend, does NOT care about him/her, only wants money, fame, notoriety. If anything, it makes them feel good…and NOT about the people to whom they “talk.” They like to feel like they are “influencing” others, but in reality, there is absolutely NOTHING real about them…or about anything they have to say.