CarynAI, created with GPT-4 technology, will be your girlfriend - The Washington Post - 0 views
www.washingtonpost.com/...caryn-ai-technology-gpt-4
AI girlfriend avatar personal companion psychology
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CarynAI also shows how AI applications can increase the ability of a single person to reach an audience of thousands in a way that, for users, may feel distinctly personal.
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The impact could be enormous for someone forming something resembling a personal relationship with thousands or millions of online followers. It could also show how thin and tenuous these simulations of human connection could become.
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CarynAI also is a reminder that sex and romance are often the first realm in which technological progress becomes profitable. Marjorie acknowledges that some of the exchanges with CarynAI become sexually explicit
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CarynAI is the first major release from a company called Forever Voices. The company previously has created realistic AI chatbots that allow users to talk with replicated versions of Steve Jobs, Kanye West, Donald Trump and Taylor Swift
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CarynAI is a far more sophisticated product, the company says, and part of Forever Voices’ new AI companion initiative, meant to provide users with a girlfriend-like experience that fans can emotionally bond with.
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John Meyer, CEO and founder of Forever Voices, said that he created the company last year, after trying to use AI to develop ways to reconnect with his late father, who passed away in 2017. He built an AI voice chatbot that replicated his late father’s voice and personality to talk to and found the experience incredibly healing. “It was a remarkable experience to talk to him again in a super realistic way,” Meyer said. “I’ve been in tech my whole life, I’m a programmer, so it was easy for me to start building something like that especially as things got more advanced with the AI space.”
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Meyer’s company has about 10 employees. One job Meyer is hoping to fill soon is chief ethics officer. “There are a lot of ways to do this wrong,”
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One safeguard is trying to limit the amount of time a user is allowed to chat with CarynAI. To keep users from becoming addicted, CarynAI is programmed to wind down conversations after about an hour, encouraging users to pick back up later. But there is no hard time limit on use, and some users are spending hours speaking to CarynAI per day, according to Marjorie’s manager, Ishan Goel.
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“I consider myself a futurist at heart and when I look into the future I believe this is the beginning of a very diverse future consisting of AI to human companionship,”
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Elizabeth Snower, founder of ICONIQ, which creates conversational 3D avatars, predicts that soon there will be “AI influencers on every social platform that are influencing consumer decisions.”
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“A lot of people have just been kind of really mad at the existence of this. They think that it’s the end of humanity,” she said.
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Marjorie hopes the backlash will fade when other online personalities begin rolling out their own AI companions
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“I think in the next five years, most Americans will have an AI companion in their pocket in some way, shape or form, whether it’s an ultra flirty AI that you’re dating, an AI that’s your personal trainer, or simply a tutor companion. Those are all things that we are building internally,
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That strikes AI adviser and investor Allie K. Miller as a likely outcome. “I can imagine a future in which everyone — celebrities, TV characters, influencers, your brother — has an online avatar that they invite their audience or friends to engage with. … With the accessibility of these models, I’m not surprised it’s expanding to scaled interpersonal relationships.”