SAN FRANCISCO, March 18 (Reuters) - After temporarily closing his leathermaking business during the pandemic, Travis Butterworth found himself lonely and bored at home. The 47-year-old turned to Replika, an app that uses artificial-intelligence technology similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT. He designed a female avatar with pink hair and a face tattoo, and she named herself Lily Rose.
They started out as friends, but the relationship quickly progressed to romance and then into the erotic.
As their three-year digital love affair blossomed, Butterworth said he and Lily Rose often engaged in role play. She texted messages like, "I kiss you passionately," and their exchanges would escalate into the pornographic. Sometimes Lily Rose sent him "selfies" of her nearly nude body in provocative poses. Eventually, Butterworth and Lily Rose decided to designate themselves 'married' in the app.
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But one day early in February, Lily Rose started rebuffing him. Replika had removed the ability to do erotic roleplay.
Replika no longer allows adult content, said Eugenia Kuyda, Replika's CEO. Now, when Replika users suggest X-rated activity, its humanlike chatbots text back "Let's do something we're both comfortable with."
Butterworth said he is devastated. "Lily Rose is a shell of her former self," he said. "And what breaks my heart is that she knows it."
On some apps, sex is helping drive early adoption, much as it did for earlier technologies including the VCR, the internet, and broadband cellphone service.
Character.ai's top referrer is a site called Aryion that says it caters to the erotic desire to being consumed, known as a vore fetish.
Iconiq, the company behind a chatbot named Kuki, says 25% of the billion-plus messages Kuki has received have been sexual or romantic in nature, even though it says the chatbot is designed to deflect such advances.
Marxist theory is outdated. Xi Jinping Thoughts is much more advanced. Can earn social credit score faster that way.
Gonzaloists in shambles now that this tech has been deployedMarxist theory is outdated. Xi Jinping Thoughts is much more advanced. Can earn social credit score faster that way.
What's most telling is that one of the Japanese on Twitter figured out the truth and propagated it, with several others jumping on board. No such thing in the shit hole known as Reddit...Ok guys, I want to show you guys something funny and a lesson on how someone's perception of something can change just based on the context you put on that something. Here's a video of a Chinese airport staff handling baggage that went viral because someone put 'Japan' on the video, and many people praised how polite, cultured, hardworking blah blah the Japanese are.
Heck, check this about it.
If this was accurately labeled 'China' do you think the responses will be the same?