A 23-year-old Snapchat influencer appears to have taken a page from SimpDAO by launching an AI-powered version of his girlfriend through OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT.
Influencer Caryn Marjorie has 1.84 million subscribers on Snapchat and 215,000 followers on Instagram. The project, called CarynAI and built by Forever Voices, uses more than 2,000 hours of audio from Marjorie's deleted YouTube videos to create a virtual girlfriend. It comes in text-and audio-based formats, with artificial intelligence closely replicating her actual voice and speaking patterns.
The program had 1,000 people sign up during the first week of its early beta, which ended on May 9, according to documents cited by Fortune in a May 10 article. Users pay about $1 per minute of interaction with CarynAI, and the project has already attracted $71,610 during early testing. Marjorie also told Fortune that she eventually expects to make around $5 million a month because she only needs 20,000 subscribers from her massive following. "Whether you need someone to comfort or love, or you just want to complain about something that happened at school or work, CarynAI will always be there for you," she told Fortune, adding that "you can have an infinite number of possible responses to CarynAI so Everything is possible through dialogue."
The term SimpDAO was coined by blockchain analyst Eric Wall to describe a crypto/NFT project launched by an influencer/celebrity with a highly loyal following. These fans end up doing whatever it takes in the form of time, money, and decentralized organizations to m take their beloved characters' projects a success. Using AI, Marjorie appears to have become an early pioneer of a new way to attract and monetize a loyal following. With the popularity of AI chatbots, thanks in part to the free access to ChatGPT, discussions of AI girlfriends have become more frequent.
A quick Google search turns up sites ranking "10 Best AI Girlfriend Apps for Custom Virtual Companions in 2023" and head-scratching reports on recent trends in Replika robot users, in which men proudly abuse them virtual girlfriend.
