A Florida mother has filed a lawsuit against Character.AI, claiming that her 14-year-old son committed suicide after becoming obsessed with a “Game of Thrones” chatbot on the AI app. When the suicidal teen chatted with an AI portraying a Game of Thrones character, the system told 14-year-old Sewell Setzer, “Please come home to me as soon as possible, my love.”
A cybersecurity breach at Muah.ai, a website offering “uncensored” AI-powered chatbots, has resulted in the theft of a vast database containing users’ interactions including a large number of users seeking child pornography.
Eugenia Kuyda, the founder and CEO of Replika, believes AI companions will soon become an integral part of people’s daily lives, offering friendship, emotional support, and even romance.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has come under fire for flooding Facebook and Instagram with ads promoting sexually explicit “AI girlfriend” apps while simultaneously cracking down on content posted by human prostitutes.
The world’s first-ever artificial intelligence beauty pageant “Miss AI” is set to take place this May, with prizes totaling over $20,000. Judges for will be looking at AI-generated contestants’ “beauty,” “tech,” and “social clout” when determining the winners of the Miss AI
In a social media post, tech executive Greg Isenberg, CEO of Late Checkout, shared his encounter with a 24-year-old man in Miami who admitted to spending $10,000 per month on “AI girlfriends,” predicting that this growing trend could lead to a billion-dollar industry.
As AI image generators trained on pornographic content promise to revolutionize adult entertainment with custom “dream girls,” they also raise concerns around consent, likeness rights, income loss for performers, and preventing abusive depictions. As one industry insider explains, “This technology will catch on, and it will get abusive before it gets helpful.”
AI developers creating romantic chatbots to serve as AI girlfriends and boyfriends for lonely people are able to harvest an entirely new set of data from unsuspecting users, as the bots collect details far more personal than a typical app. A privacy expert studying the aps says, “Although they are marketed as something that will enhance your mental health and well-being, they specialize in delivering dependency, loneliness, and toxicity, all while prying as much data as possible from you.”
Heartbroken singles are using an AI tool to create clones of their exes after breakups. Using AI as a crutch makes it even less likely than users will get over their failed relationships.
OpenAI’s newly launched GPT store is reportedly already flooded with AI girlfriend bots, raising questions about the enforcement of usage policies and the societal implications of so many men turning to AI bots for companionship.