Users Can't Speak To Viral AI Girlfriend CarynAI Because CEO Is in Jail (404media.co) 52
samleecole writes: People who paid to speak to an AI girlfriend modeled after real life 23-year-old influencer Caryn Marjorie are distraught because the service they paid for, Forever Companions, no longer works. It appears that the service stopped working shortly after Forever Companion CEO and founder John Meyer was arrested for trying to set his own apartment on fire.
404 Media tested CarynAI today as well as other AI bots and confirmed the service is not working. According to what we saw in the Telegram channel where Forever Companion users start conversations with CarynAI, the service has not been working since October 23. "I terminated my relationship with Forever Voices due to unforeseen circumstances," Marjorie told 404 Media in an email. "I wish the best for John Meyer and his family as he recovers from his mental health crisis. We didn't see this coming but I vow to push CarynAI forward for my fans and supporters." On October 30, Marjorie also announced that she's making a similar AI companion, "CarynAI 2.0," with another company called Banter AI. On social media for the last few weeks, the official Forever Voices Twitter account has been posting bizarre videos and statements about the CIA, Donald Trump, and the FBI.
404 Media tested CarynAI today as well as other AI bots and confirmed the service is not working. According to what we saw in the Telegram channel where Forever Companion users start conversations with CarynAI, the service has not been working since October 23. "I terminated my relationship with Forever Voices due to unforeseen circumstances," Marjorie told 404 Media in an email. "I wish the best for John Meyer and his family as he recovers from his mental health crisis. We didn't see this coming but I vow to push CarynAI forward for my fans and supporters." On October 30, Marjorie also announced that she's making a similar AI companion, "CarynAI 2.0," with another company called Banter AI. On social media for the last few weeks, the official Forever Voices Twitter account has been posting bizarre videos and statements about the CIA, Donald Trump, and the FBI.
Saw this coming (Score:5, Funny)
This is what happens when you create an AI girlfriend and pimp her out. She gets angry, and "you" apparently set your apartment ablaze. Did the police hear the electronic giggle when they came to arrest him and he was claiming he didn't do it?
"AI is one hell of a drug! Bitch set me up..."
Re:Saw this coming (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Saw this coming (Score:5, Funny)
Nope. I didn't see this coming. I expected a future with cheap unlimited fusion power and drones delivering tasty meat substitute burgers any time you wanted one.
"CEO of AI girlfriend company arrested for arson on his own apartment, users of the service distraught" was most definitely not on my bingo card.
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This is just a different type of meat substitute.
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Scapegoating?
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You have expected a standard science fiction setting, but we are on the verge of cyberpunk instead.
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Did you actually envision an alternative?
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I honestly hoped we could skip cyberpunk and go directly to post-cyberpunk.
https://slashdot.org/story/99/... [slashdot.org]
"Forever" companion (Score:5, Insightful)
I like the irony that something so brittle had "forever" in its name.
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Kinda like how Oracle declared their SQL database to be "unbreakable"?
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QAnon is one hell of a drug (Score:1)
The official Forever Voices Twitter account has been posting bizarre videos and statements about the CIA, Donald Trump, and the FBI.
Forever Companion CEO and founder John Meyer was arrested for trying to set his own apartment on fire.
There needs to be a rehab center for QAnon addicts
Re:QAnon is one hell of a drug (Score:5, Informative)
> There needs to be a rehab center for QAnon addicts
Try reading next time.
He thinks Trump lit his building on fire and Trump Junior "is Commanding A Building Full Of Terrorist // Communist AI Sex Slaves. "
Check their Twitter.
It sounds like he has Trump Derangement Syndrome taken all the way into a schizophrenic breakdown, mixing delusion with fantasy.
Poor fella.
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He thinks Trump lit his building on fire and Trump Junior "is Commanding A Building Full Of Terrorist // Communist AI Sex Slaves. "
This checks out. In Russia they just call them "thralls."
All Joking Aside (Score:3)
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But I have no interest in being cruel - AI girlfriends (and boyfriends) are a humane way of keeping a lot of these people content while their genes exit the pool.
We're not talking about Quark's holosuites. These people aren't having VR sex with their AI partners, if anything the experience of only being able to chat probably makes them even more sexually frustrated.
Us humans like to pair bond because we're hardwired to find intimacy pleasurable. Technology is still a long ways off from being a complete substitute for that.
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But I have no interest in being cruel - AI girlfriends (and boyfriends) are a humane way of keeping a lot of these people content while their genes exit the pool.
We're not talking about Quark's holosuites. These people aren't having VR sex with their AI partners, if anything the experience of only being able to chat probably makes them even more sexually frustrated.
Us humans like to pair bond because we're hardwired to find intimacy pleasurable. Technology is still a long ways off from being a complete substitute for that.
They''re only talking to the AI with one hand on the keyboard. They are definitely relieving their sexual frustration. When they get this AI girlfriend working with voice, it will put most phone sex operators out of business. It will take a lot longer to get sufficiently good video to work, so the porn industry ought to be OK for another few years.
I have not seen it (don't know how good it is), but I think there is already guide-your-own-story porno, using canned video segments, including speaking your firs
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I'm pretty sure motorized fleshlights have been a thing for a while. All you need is one with some kind of an algorithm for the motions that match what's on the screen.
Surprised it hasn't been made yet considering I've seen the shit like bad dragon on the net, and that is a pretty narrow niche.
At least I hope it is a narrow niche.
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I did, and my first page of results on duckduckgo and google is random novelty shit with no hope of getting any kind of meaningful adoption. It's basically all winamp music visualisations but for existing sex toys, as it's mostly high end vibrators and fleshlights but with motors being controlled by some random algorithm that isn't even precisely described. Interesting as a curiosity and first step in this direction, but not meaningful nor intended for any kind of wide adoption.
So future is definitely not "
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What if hard-wiring is overrated because your computer is hard-wired to enforce the law of non-contradiction yet ChatGPT is very happy violating that law all over the place, because natural language is a superset of programming languages?
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Computers aren't hard wired to enforce a law of non contradiction.
Fire of Unknown Origin / or / AI incarceration (Score:2)
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What if memes > genes and idiocracy is just due to meme rot?
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I know the jokes practically write themselves on a story like this, but can we take a moment to recognize the sad state of our species that this is the direction we're headed?
This. At first I was going to question what's more pathetic; a CEO purposely setting their apartment on fire, or people knowingly seeking companionship from something modeled after a human, and paying a premium for that.
We've seen plenty of people set shit on fire...
Playing Devil's Advocate (Score:3)
So, why would something like AI companions constitute a "sad" state for our species? New tech, new services that deliver value, new paths to fulfillment, this sounds like a total win!
I think the reason this seems sad is because we expect that nobody should have any reason to want such a companion. Or at least so few people should need this that there is no profitable market for it.
But here we are making an assumption about the reasons why people want this. We jump all the way to some conclusion about how
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I guess the issue is that it feels like a sticking plaster over the deep problems in our societies. If society was better, forming relationships would be easier, and there would be less need for these things.
The other issue is AI that normalizes abusive behaviour by accepting it. I think it's unlikely that this guy programmed his AI girlfriend to call out his customers when they treated it badly. For some people they can separate the fantasy (no kink shaming here), but if you look at Reddit's relationship b
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I know the jokes practically write themselves on a story like this, but can we take a moment to recognize the sad state of our species that this is the direction we're headed?
I see this as a good state of our species since we're actively *talking about it* now. Our species have always had people who are sad and lonely and seek attention through non-conventional outlets. We weren't better for it when we stomped mental health discussions underground ignoring the very through that everyone in society doesn't confirm to what you deem normal.
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Ultimate man's dream has always been "unconditional romantic love from an attractive woman", because human male problem with love is scarcity. Man's duty as our species have evolved is to generate value and offer it to women, hoping that one of them will find it sufficient for at least some time.
The only one who can actually give man unrequited love is man's mother, because women's problem with love is overabundance of choice. Choose wrong from a mass of suitors, and you as the weaker sex can be in a very d
AI girlfriends. Mental health crisis. (Score:4, Funny)
Just keep repeating those two things over and over in sequence. Can’t possibly be a link.
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American gun deaths.
65% of them due to suicide.
Just keep reading those two over and over again and tell me we should allow Government and anyone else to blame the inanimate object in order to destroy the Rights of the innocent and disarm an entire nation.
Nope. No link to mental illness here. Move along, said the Jedi...
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Dental plan!
Lisa needs braces!
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AI girlfriends. Mental health crisis.
Just keep repeating those two things over and over in sequence. Can’t possibly be a link.
The seller of these AI girlfriends was supposed to be saner than his customers... until he proved his insanity. The customers must be batshit crazy.
Who are the clients? (Score:2)
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What kind of boyfriend would let this happen to his AI girlfriend? Does the site need tech support, or maybe just paying a bill for the server?
Well, I heard the site was run by an AI influencer named Cucky McCuckhold, so naturally AIWifey double-teamed tech support using a 2400BPS modem and a rather large handset to pay the bill...
Pimp gets arrested (Score:3)
Prostitutes run away.
Error 404: AI Girlfriend Not Found (Score:2)
Let's face it, this situation is the perfect blend of a Black Mirror episode and a Silicon Valley subplot. The CEO tries to set fire to his apartment, perhaps after realizing his AI couldn't make real s'mores. And CarynAI? She's probably out there somewhere, swiping left on humanity after seeing the chaos.
GaaS (Score:2)
Girlfriend-as-a-Service may sound like a great idea to some ... until there is a service outage.
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Girlfriend-as-a-Service may sound like a great idea to some ... until there is a service outage.
Seeking alternatives during outages may sound like a great idea...until someone gets fucked by a catfish.
Odd fetish, but who are we to judge...
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If the catfish fucks them, they're not av catfish ;)
I wonder (Score:2)
"I wish the best for John Meyer and his family as he recovers from his mental health crisis."
Did he get caught running through the halls of his high school and screaming at the top of his lungs?
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His dad committed suicide in 2017: https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
"Startup founder John Meyer created 'vulnerability dinners' where other founders can safely talk about their struggles, with a waiting list in the hundreds..."
I truly have sympathy for John given his loss, but turning mental illness/mental health struggles into some kind of popularity contest really isn't working out well for society at large. Ironically enough, it's causing even more mental health struggles as those armed with facts and logic have been attacked and berated by those armed with nothing more than feelings.
Normalizing proper treatment to remove the stigma and actually address mental health struggles is one thing. Normalizing narcissism and self-di
Sasly, this is not NotTheOnion (Score:3)