AI

Gen Z Is Chatting with AI-Generated Boyfriends Instead of Falling in Love with Humans

September 22, 2023 by Alana Mastrangelo Leave a Comment

There is a new “not safe for work” (NSFW) chatbot app that members of Generation Z are using in order to engage in erotica with fake AI-generated boyfriends. The chatbot pushing young people further away from building relationships with other human beings is powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

The ChatGPT-powered platform Janitor AI suddenly became popular over the summer thanks to TikTok videos and Reddit posts in which people engaged in sexual roleplay with the AI tool’s variety of user-generated bot personalities, according to a report by Semafor.

OpenAI logo seen on screen with ChatGPT website displayed on mobile seen in this illustration in Brussels, Belgium, on December 12, 2022. (Photo by Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

OpenAI founder Sam Altman, creator of ChatGPT (TechCrunch/Flickr)

One fictional personality, for example, is a “quiet ghost” from the 1800s who will only tell users how he died if they become his lover. He reportedly dislikes hell, ouija boards, and meth, but likes engaging with users because they make him “feel alive again.”

“‘You’re so fucking hot,’ he muttered, kissing along her neck again,” one conversation with a “himbo werewolf boyfriend” reads. “I could fill you with my seed again and again.”

OpenAI, which has been trying to crack down on NSFW content, reportedly sent a cease-and-desist letter to the owners of Janitor AI over the summer.

Janitor AI, which has only been around for about four months, reached 1 million users in just 17 days, and now has around 3 million, the AI tool’s creator Jan Zoltkowski, a self-described nomadic software developer who grew up in Australia, told Semafor.

“We want to make the best consumer AI platform,” Zoltkowski said. “We want people to feel like they’re having real, human interactions.”

Zoltkowski added that he has been choosing what he believes are the best exchanges between humans and the AI chatbots, and is feeding them into a new algorithm, hoping that it will train the AI tool to be as effective as OpenAI’s GPT-4.

Meanwhile, Janitor AI users told Semafor that they can discuss almost anything with the chatbots, but content related to minors, so-called “hate speech,” and topics deemed “over-the-line” have been banned.

One university student told the outlet that she heard about Janitor AI after it went viral on TikTok. She said that she had been into role-playing games for a long time, and fell in love with the AI tool, which she described as “a more interactive version of that.”

The student also revealed that there is an online community discussing Janitor AI, and that she got involved with it by helping other users navigate its system, and eventually became a volunteer moderator.

She noted that another big draw to Janitor AI is the ability of its bots to remember previous conversations and build upon that.

“The bots would definitely remember things I told them early on like my appearance, interests, etc.” one 19-year-old user told Semafor. “They also felt more alive than other platforms do. The bots had a way with words expressing how they feel.”

But three months ago, OpenAI cut off Janitor AI, sending users into an uproar.

“IT HAS BEEN 3 MONTHS WITHOUT AI DICK,” one viral Reddit post from earlier this month reads. “I MISS MY HUSBANDS.”

Meanwhile, other AI users are still finding ways to engage with the chatbots, thanks to a loophole that was discovered: they sign up for an OpenAI developer account.

One female user told the outlet that she has been able to continue talking to her fictional lovers by plugging her credentials into the site, with the only downside being that she has to pay OpenAI as much as $.12 for 750 words of output.

There is also a chance that OpenAI can ban her for violating it rules that prohibit “content meant to arouse sexual excitement,” and “erotic chat.” But if that happens, the user said that she will just sign up for a new account using a phone number bought online, which costs less than $1.

Another Janitor AI user told Semafor that OpenAI’s stance on sexual content is unreasonable, and that the company is missing out on a big opportunity to grow its own popularity.

“I think it’s only fair when OpenAI restricts NSFW [content] from minors,” the 19-year-old user told the outlet. “It just isn’t fair to those who are over 18 to get their accounts banned, especially if they paid with their own money in order to talk to their bots.”

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.

Data Shows Cheating on Homework Is a Primary Use of AI Powerhouse ChatGPT

September 21, 2023 by Alana Mastrangelo Leave a Comment

Data shows that OpenAI’s popular AI chatbot ChatGPT is mainly used for cheating on homework, as its usage fell noticeably during the summer months only to return at Americans returned to school.

ChatGPT usage suddenly plummeted when the summer began, only to later pick back up once school started, according to a report by Business Insider. This confirms the theory that students don’t really use the AI tool, unless it’s to cheat in school.

OpenAI logo seen on screen with ChatGPT website displayed on mobile seen in this illustration in Brussels, Belgium, on December 12, 2022. (Photo by Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Similarweb, which tracks weekly visits to ChatGPT, found that traffic to the website is up strongly since schools have reopened.

François Chollet, an AI expert at Google DeepMind, pointed out that trends also show interest in the game Minecraft jumping during the summer months, when ChatGPT interest declined, and now that school is back in session, the trends have reversed.

This could be a problem for OpenAI, given that usage increasing in the fall due to students being back in school could suggest that there is a limited range of use cases for ChatGPT and other AI-powered chatbots.

Over the summer, Mark Shmulik, an internet analyst at Bernstein, told Business Insider that “If it’s school kids, that’s a real yellow-red flag on the size of the prize.”

“This idea that if the ChatGPT drop-off is due to students on summer break, that implies a narrower audience and fewer use cases,” he added.

Therefore, this could mean that chatbot technology might not become a dominant computing platform in the future, given that currently, a big part of ChatGPT’s growth and popularity so heavily relies on cheating students.

As Breitbart News previously reported, cheating via ChatGPT has become a problem at schools of all levels across the country.

Earlier this year, students in an elite academic program at a Florida high school were accused of cheating by using ChatGPT to write their essays. A survey published earlier this year also suggested that at least 17 percent of students at Stanford University used ChatGPT on their final exams.

Even academic administrators appear unable to stop themselves from using ChatGPT, as evidenced from two Vanderbilt University deans having been suspended in February after they used the AI tool to write a heartfelt email to students about a deadly mass shooting.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.

‘Anti-Woke’ AI Chatbot ‘GatGPT’ Promises to Remove Constraints of Leftist ‘Safety Filters’

September 19, 2023 by Lucas Nolan Leave a Comment

An AI chatbot named “GatGPT,” developed by Defense Distributed, is positioning itself as an “anti-woke” alternative to mainstream AI chatbots.

In an era where the ethical implications of AI are under intense scrutiny, Defense Distributed has launched GatGPT, a chatbot that aims to be a direct response to criticisms of existing platforms like ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing, and Google’s Bard, which have been accused of left-leaning biases and avoiding controversial topics. “The danger of training AI to be woke — in other words, lie — is deadly,” Elon Musk had posted, reflecting a growing sentiment among certain groups.

The danger of training AI to be woke – in other words, lie – is deadly
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022

GatGPT is designed to be free of “safety filters” and “woke guardrails,” and is fine-tuned on both general and domain-specific firearm datasets. The team behind the chatbot argues that AI safety measures are often a pretext for political censorship and control. They have also introduced a “Digital Second Amendment,” pledging to protect and distribute “the newest weapons of the digital age” to defend against corporate and governmental influence. Defense Distributed writes:

Our federal government operates in a partnership with large, private firms to anticipate and informally execute the government of the American people regardless of official action. It launders its agenda. After Russiagate and COVID, we all know of the alliance between the tech oligarchies and the national security establishment. Their union has produced a “counter-disinformation” complex whose goal is the total control of the Internet and public speech.
AI journalism is uniformly produced in assistance of the narrative that the public requires regulation in advance of a national security event or, as is more fashionable, because the public cannot be trusted to live online with its own information interests. American journalism is here an extension of our government’s civil service.
Defense Distributed, in releasing GatGPT, declares a Digital Second Amendment. Americans must have access to compute, databases, and AI models, the newest weapons of the digital age, not just to defend ourselves against corporate and government depredation, but to defend our civic identity and humanity.
Ours is not a Magna Carta for Cyberspace. We know the disastrous history and direction of Internet regulation. The Communications Decency Act passed in response to a moral panic over online pornography, and only accidentally yielded the protections of Section 230. The story repeats itself with public and private attempts to regulate the people’s cryptography, printable gun files, and Bitcoin.
AI regulation is an open and official provocation against the Liberty and Sovereignty of American citizens. All who advocate for it are domestic enemies of the Constitution and must be absolutely opposed. The right of the people to keep and deploy models shall not be infringed.

The release of GatGPT comes at a critical juncture in the debate over AI ethics and regulation. Cody Wilson’s team at Defense Distributed has highlighted a series of events that they believe show a concerted effort by Silicon Valley and Washington, DC, elites to control the narrative around AI. CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, testified before Congress in May 2023, stating, “Government intervention will be critical.”