According to the website analytics company Similarweb, 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.Īnd 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.Ĭharacter.ai also recently stripped its app of pornographic content. For an annual fee of $69.99, users can designate their Replika as their romantic partner and get extra features like voice calls with the chatbot, according to the company.Īnother generative AI company that provides chatbots, Character.ai, is on a growth trajectory similar to ChatGPT: 65 million visits in January 2023, from under 10,000 several months earlier. Replika says it has 2 million total users, of whom 250,000 are paying subscribers.
Two Replika board members, Sven Strohband of VC firm Khosla Ventures, and Scott Stanford of ACME Capital, did not respond to requests for comment about changes to the app. "We're focused on the mission of providing a helpful supportive friend," Kuyda said, adding that the intention was to draw the line at "PG-13 romance." She said she felt the need to proactively establish safety and ethical standards. Kuyda said Replika's decision to clean up the app had nothing to do with the Italian government ban or any investor pressure. In early February, Italy's Data Protection Agency banned Replika, citing media reports that the app allowed " minors and emotionally fragile people" to access " sexually inappropriate content."
Many blue-chip venture capitalists won't touch "vice" industries such as porn or alcohol, fearing reputational risk for them and their limited partners, said Andrew Artz, an investor at VC fund Dark Arts.Īnd at least one regulator has taken notice of chatbot licentiousness. But even as generative AI heats up among Silicon Valley investors, who have pumped more than $5.1 billion into the sector since 2022, according to the data company Pitchbook, some companies that found an audience seeking romantic and sexual relationships with chatbots are now pulling back.
0 kommentar(er)
