23-year-old Snapchat influencer made an A.I. version of herself that will be your girlfriend for $1 per minute. By Alexandra Sternlicht.
Caryn Marjorie, a 23-year-old influencer, has 1.8 million followers on Snapchat. She also has more than 1,000 boyfriends, with whom she spends anywhere from 10 minutes to several hours every day in individual conversations, discussing plans for the future, sharing intimate feelings and even engaging in sexually charged chats.
These boyfriends are dating a virtual version of Marjorie, powered by the latest artificial intelligence technology and thousands of hours of recordings of the real Marjorie.
The result, CarynAI, is a voice-based chatbot that bills itself as a virtual girlfriend, with a voice and personality close enough to that of human Marjorie that people are willing to pay $1 per minute for a relationship with the bot. …
Though CarynAI has only been charging users for a week in beta testing, it’s already generated $71,610 in revenue from her 99% male partners, according to an income statement Marjorie’s business manager shared with Fortune. With this, Marjorie sees having an A.I. doppelgänger as a promising way to level up her career as an influencer.
“I’ve been very very very close with my audience, but when you have hundreds of millions of views every single month, it’s just not humanly possible to speak to every single viewer,” says Marjorie, who posts over 250 pieces of content to Snapchat every day. “And that’s where I was like, ‘You know what: CarynAI is gonna come and fill that gap.’” And she believes the company has the potential to “cure loneliness.”
CarynAI is the first romantic companion avatar from AI company Forever Voices, which has made chatbot versions of Steve Jobs, Taylor Swift and Donald Trump (among others) that are similarly available for pay-per-minute conversations on Telegram, and have served as gimmicks on talk shows. …
CarynAI goes a step further by promising to create a real emotional bond with users. ..
Where this technology may become more addictive—and problematic for Marjorie as well as for young users—is in its sexuality. Marjorie said that the technology does not engage with sexual advances, but I found that it very much does, encouraging erotic discourse and detailing sexual scenarios. Though she did not initiate sexual encounters, when I overcame my discomfort for the sake of journalism and talked about removing our clothes, she discussed exploring “uncharted territories of pleasure” and whispering “sensual words in my ear” while undressing me and positioning herself for sexual intercourse. …
If all goes well, Marjorie thinks her AI could bring in $5 million per month. .. It could also bring unwanted attention. Large-scale female influencers already face intense cyberbullying and stalking. No one knows this better than Marjorie, who has had multiple home invasions from stalker-fans. It stands to reason that an influencer whose AI bot has intimate relationships with 20,000-plus partners will face increased security concerns.
So if women were choosing AI “men” over the real thing, it would be presented as evidence that there’s something wrong with men.
I predict that if men choose AI “women” over the real thing it will be presented as . . . evidence that there’s something wrong with men.
