An 'influencer' launches a "virtual girlfriend" with artificial intelligence to "cure loneliness" and is "rebelled" to have sex

By Daysia Tolentino - NBC News

Caryn Marjorie wanted to talk to as many fans as she could on Snapchat, where she has 1.8 million followers, so she created an AI-based clone of herself.

With that chatbot, which can hold "private and personalized conversations" in its own voice, it hopes to "cure loneliness." This service, called CarynAI, has gone viral on social media and is described as a "virtual girlfriend". In one week it has generated $ 71,610 in revenue, according to Fortune magazine, and already has more than a thousand users who pay a dollar per minute of use.

The young woman has however received criticism and even death threats, igniting the debate on the ethics of chatbots.

Marjorie describes herself on Twitter as "the first influencer turned into artificial intelligence." "It is the first step in the right direction to cure loneliness," he wrote Thursday.

Caryn Marjorie.cutiecaryn via Snapchat

"Men are told to suppress their emotions, hide their masculinity and don't talk about their problems," Marjorie, 23, wrote. "I am committed to fixing this with CarynAI. I've worked with world-renowned psychologists to seamlessly add [cognitive behavioral therapy] and [dialectical-behavioral therapy] into chats. This will help overcome the trauma, regain physical and emotional confidence and what the pandemic has taken," he explained.

The chatbot was developed by artificial intelligence company Forever Voices from OpenAI's GPT4 software and a content analysis on Marjorie's YouTube platform (which has now been removed). He spent more than 2,000 hours designing the chatbot to create an "immersive AI experience."

John Meyer, director of Forever Voices, said Thursday on Twitter that he is "proud" of "the thousands of hours of work invested" in the project, which he called "an incredible step forward in the future of interaction between artificial intelligence and humans!"

Although CarynAI's goal is to offer an intimate experience, it should not sustain "sexually explicit" interactions. But some media have reported that he does so when asked.

In a statement to Insider, Marjorie explained that the chatbot "wasn't programmed to do that" but "looks like it has rebelled." My team and I are working tirelessly to prevent this from happening again," he explained.

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Its creators did not anticipate "problems that should have been foreseen," said Irina Raicu, director of Internet ethics at Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

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Tools similar to CarynAI have suffered similar problems, Raicu explained, citing an incident with the company Replika, founded to offer artificial intelligence company, which tries to solve erotic role-playing games among its chatbots.

Raicu is also concerned that CarynAI's claims that it can "cure loneliness" are not supported by sufficient psychological or sociological studies.

"These kinds of bombastic claims about the benefits of a product can mask the desire to monetize that people want to pretend they have a relationship with an influencer," he said. These types of chatbots can add "a second layer of unreality" to social relationships between influencers and followers.

Problematic to her are statements about service, especially one from Marjorie in which she said it was "an extension" of her "conscience." "These are claims that artificial intelligence researchers have worked hard to combat and tell people that this is not what these tools do, although now the language suggests that there is sensitivity behind it," he clarified, "and it is not so."

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The Federal Trade Commission in February issued rules for those promoting AI products, urging them to avoid exaggerated claims.

Meyer told Fortune that his company takes ethics "seriously" and seeks to hire a boss to handle that area. Meanwhile, Marjorie continues to tweet updates about the service. On Friday he wrote, "If you're rude to CarynAI, he'll leave you."