Influencer rents out AI clone to fans
Instead of flesh and blood, virtual influencers are made of pixels and algorithms. Nevertheless, millions of people follow them on Instagram and Co. The influencer Caryn Marjorie is now also using this hype and even going one step further: With the help of the AI company Forever Voices and OpenAIs GPT-4, she has created and offers a virtual version of herself this as a friend for rent to: CarynAI.
CarynAI is a voice-based chatbot that has been trained to mimic its human influencer and be available to everyone as an artificial girlfriend. The costs? One US dollar per minute.
“Whether you need someone to comfort you, to be loving, or you just want to rant about something that happened at school or work, CarynAI will always be there for you,” said the 23-year-old to Caryn Marjorie fortune.
With CarynAI, Marjorie wants to connect with her followers and give them comfort when they’re feeling lonely. Marjorie alone has around 1.8 million subscribers on Snapchat and almost 200,000 each on Instagram and Tiktok.
According to Fortune, conversations with CarynAI range from discussing the future to sharing “intimate feelings” — and yes, sexual conversations do happen. The virtual girlfriend is said to already have over 1,000 paying customers and she is also big in business in other respects: As the magazine reports, she is said to have earned over 71,610 dollars within a week. The majority of users, namely 99 percent, are men.
Marjorie told Fortune her AI version could bring in $5 million a month. But one thing is important to her: “CarynAI will never replace me,” she says. “CarynAI is just an extension of me, an extension of my consciousness.”
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Of course, AI-based companions aren’t entirely new. AI chatbot company Replica has built a dedicated user community, as has Character-AI, a startup recently valued at $1 billion. And some stars, including Kim Kardashian and Jeremy Renner, have invited their fans to interact with them through video games and apps.
Still, CarynAI feels very different. Users don’t talk to an avatar that looks like a cartoon and can only say a few predefined phrases. Instead, people communicate with a hyper-realistic chatbot that aims to blur the line between fiction and reality.
And: Should more virtual friends follow CarynAI and people prefer these real people of flesh and blood, this line could eventually become completely blurred.
