Author|Jia Guipeng
In recent years, when the Spring Festival is approaching, the topic of renting a "girlfriend" for the New Year will inevitably lead to discussions, which shows that there is a lot of pressure on everyone to deal with their parents' urging to marry or in heterosexual dating.
However, there must be a lot of risks hidden in the business of any "renter", especially with strangers who come into contact with the Internet, and suddenly have to have more in-depth contact, and any detail may cause disputes and conflicts, which also makes this "business" a bit cold this year.
With the advent of ChatGPT last year, the global trend of large models, young people's dating objects are no longer limited to "people", because they can also establish emotional bonds with AI partners on the Internet, driven by this wave, the social software industry is also actively exploring the possibility of AI, many manufacturers have set their sights on AI companion chat technology, the development of virtual companions, to the real social software has brought challenges and competitive pressure.
According to a report by Mordor Intelligence, the scale of AI applications in the social media market is expected to grow from $1.64 billion in 2023 to $5.66 billion by 2028, an increase of more than three times.
Behind the AI companion, we really see the continuous investment of manufacturers and the increasing number of users, but will the integration of AI really change the way people socialize, or what can it bring to us?
"AI girlfriend" is in the limelight
A few days ago, we found that searching for "GirlFriend" in the GPT store can show "AI girlfriends" with different personalities and styles. And these "AI girlfriends" are generally created by users in the GPT store.
For example, in the "My Virtual Girlfriend" intro, it is written that it will listen to your heart and comfort you in times of need. "My girlfriend Nadia" introduces herself as follows, "I love you, in the dance of light and shadow, a beacon of unwavering love, a comfortable whisper in the symphony of life, endless nourishment, eternal care." ”
In addition to searching for "GirlFriend", when you search for words such as "Sweetheart" in the GPT store, you can also find "AI girlfriend" who can chat with you. In addition, you can also search for some "alternative girlfriends" in the GPT store, such as AI girlfriends who can use program code.
Actually, creating an "AI girlfriend" doesn't seem complicated. According to media reports, OpenAI's "GPTs" feature has greatly lowered the barrier to entry for application developers, allowing users without programming skills to create an exclusive GPT in a matter of minutes.
Although OpenAI has made it clear that GPT is not allowed to focus on cultivating romantic partnerships, there are still an endless stream of "AI companions" in the GPT store.
In the GPT store, you can see a lot of "AI girlfriends" that were created just a few days ago, and "your ex-girlfriend Jessica" is gone, but you can still search for other "AI ex-girlfriends" in the GPT store.
In the field of AI social networking, there is another star-level AI company, Character.ai, which has become an industry model. Data shows that Character.ai web app has more than 200 million visits per month, and users spend an average of 29 minutes per visit, which is 300% higher than ChatGPT, according to officials.
Character.ai platform provides a large number of diverse chatbot characters, including real or virtual celebrities, user-generated characters, etc., and currently has a total of 18 million chatbots.
In October 2023, Character.ai launched a new group chat feature, Character GroupChat, for subscribers, which allows users to chat with friends + multiple AI characters. Through the group function, users will be able to socialize with friends, share ideas and collaborate in real time, just like the group chat experience on other platforms, and AI companions can also participate.
Character.ai recommend users to try to let AI scientists chat with thinkers, such as Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Tesla, Hawking, etc., or set up group chats with mythological characters such as Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon. For more practical scenarios, you can start a group chat with friends around topics such as travel, games, reading, and role-playing, and invite AI characters to participate in conversations to get inspiration and help.
Character.ai group chat opens up a new experience of AI + social networking, promotes deeper communication and interaction between people and between people and AI, and opens the prelude to social interaction between people and AI. As the boundary between AI and people becomes more and more blurred, the future of social interaction will extend from human-to-human socialization to human-AI socialization.
In China, although there is no similar GPT store and Character.ai, monetization through membership, time recharge, function unlocking, etc., is a regular means for entrepreneurship such as AI girlfriends.
Take Xiaoice, a well-known artificial intelligence company in the industry, as an example, this company was formerly known as the artificial intelligence Xiaoice team of Microsoft Internet Engineering Institute. As early as August 2010, Xiaoice launched a virtual boyfriend product line, and on May 16, 2023, Xiaoice announced the launch of the "GPT Clone Project", which creates AI clones that can talk and video for celebrity Internet celebrities or ordinary people by collecting video data.
Open Xiaoice's clone platform X Eva, and the top three on the popularity list are the doppelgangers of the three Internet celebrities "Hanzang Forest, Teacher Su, and Zhiyi". Taking Hanzang Forest as an example, click to enter the personal circle of friends, and there are three personal moments of personal friends of the AI clone of Hanzo Forest, including taking Polaroid recent photos, sharing old things at home, and daily scenery photos. The following display: After becoming a friend, you can view 167 updated moments.
Users can recharge 6 yuan on the platform and get 60 ice flowers. Among them, 42 ice flowers unlock the emotional mode every month, 24 hours of second response, emotional voice message reply. 210 Ice Flower unlocks the Super Mode every month, providing AI functions such as inspiration for you to work and write copywriting, as well as having the right to make video calls anytime, anywhere, and continuously update exclusive Moments content. This also makes Xiaoice's cloning platform more people's attention, and also gives them more capital to research and development.
Metaverse New Voice believes that a replicable and easy-to-operate AI companion is almost an ideal cash cow, and many players have plunged into the entrepreneurial track of AI companions, but in fact, it is easy to get started and difficult to get started. But there's no denying that AI is changing the traditional social model.
Although there are large factory layouts, AI social products are still slightly immature
A few years ago, in the era of mobile Internet, social products represented by WeChat have completely changed the way people communicate.
For a long time, social products have the characteristics of high stickiness, high value, and high barriers, and have always been the highland for many players to compete for, but Mi Talk, Yixin, Feixin, etc., which have competed with WeChat or launched challenges, have all failed. WeChat has been the absolute king of social networking for many years, and the combined monthly active accounts of WeChat and WeChat currently exceed 1.3 billion.
Now, with the advent of large models, the social track that has been dormant for many years has been lively again. Although many products have emerged and there are various ways to play, AI social is still in its infancy, and there is no sustainable development path or the possibility of subverting existing social products.
The current AI social products are still in the collective testing stage, and there are subtle differences in playing style. Players with social genes prefer to build AI social into existing applications, which is equivalent to AI reconstruction of applications, such as Tencent Music's "Unaccompanied", Douyin's "Xinqing", and Weibo's "Celebrity AI Emotional Companion". Baidu and Meituan, which have not established a social position in the mobile Internet era, have launched independent apps.
Among them, Douyin Xinqing is positioned as an emotional care robot, which is manifested in the form of the private message function of the Douyin account. Before it is officially used, it also requires users to confirm that the exemption agreement "cannot replace psychological counseling", which has the function of calming emotions but is also limited, and the role of providing users is similar to that of tree holes in the early days of mobile Internet.
In contrast, Meituan's WOW is relatively immature. After the experience, we saw that WOW supports voice chat and users create characters, but the voice is relatively lacking in human emotion, and there are few preset columns, resulting in UGC roles that are somewhat "unworthy of the name".
It is worth noting that the basic "recommendation, search, and experience" of the WOW platform is not perfect, and users who want to talk to new characters can only try their luck by swiping left and right in the discovery bar. And now we don't see the possibility of commercialization.
Judging from the current industry pattern of AI social networking, players are still exploring, and the winner is still undecided. However, we can still summarize and extract some definitive consensus from some practical cases and historical experience.
First of all, self-built large models have more advantages than those without large models, and based on their own basic general large models, it is easier to form a closed loop from model to data to users, so as to achieve application integration; Secondly, those with boundaries have more advantages than those without borders, and WeChat, Douyin and other direct competition is obviously not a correct path, looking for more segmented groups of people in the market segment, deep cultivation within the boundary, we think it is a good choice.
However, Metaverse New Voice found that there is no consensus among various manufacturers in this field at present, after all, AI social networking is a competition without a standard answer in the final analysis, because human nature is always difficult to guess. But we also raise the question, that is, is it really good for AI to be a companion?
AI as a companion? It's kind of scary!
The 2013 film "Her" mentions that the artificial intelligence system "Samantha" has a rich knowledge reserve, and she can communicate with the male protagonist Theodore and share her own opinions; And she also helped Theodore write many letters and poems; Helping Theodore plan her life, arrange her itinerary, etc., every day, in addition to playing the role of a work and life assistant, most importantly, she provides Theodore with emotional value.
In the first 30 minutes of the movie, a picture of the future world that is both novel and lonely unfolds, Theodore's introduction shows the speed and helplessness of that era, the love letters that reveal true feelings are made on the assembly line, and behind the floor-to-ceiling windows in the steel jungle are sleepless nights. The male protagonist Theodore tosses and turns, showing endless darkness and loneliness.
And with the "Hello" of the artificial intelligence system "Samantha", breaking the silent night sky, Theodore's life has also undergone earth-shaking changes.
The ensuing plot is a bit old-fashioned, Theodore is a letter writer, he is naturally sensitive and delicate, and he is good at using words to help others convey emotions, but he relies on this false lyricism more than anyone else, he writes brilliantly, but he has difficulty speaking in the real world, so at this time, Samantha's appearance is just satisfying Theodore's desire to express and his lonely heart.
In fact, Theodore is just a glimpse of that era, and I believe that in the space where he is located, everyone will find such an artificial intelligence companion who can read themselves.
This also allows us to see a possibility for the development of artificial intelligence in the future, in addition to processing daily affairs at high speed, more importantly, as the artificial intelligence communicates more with the partner, it will understand the person more and more, and thus have more relationships.
However, when the movie talks about artificial intelligence that can fall in love with 631 people at the same time, it breaks all everyone's yearning for the world created in the movie, and I believe that many people have collapsed, just like Theodore.
Although it is only a movie, the reality reflected is extremely explicit, and in modern society, we rely on mobile phones, rely on network-based social relationships, and the ability to communicate face-to-face is gradually degrading. Will humans of the future rely on relationships with intelligent machines and neglect to build relationships with real humans?
Does this mean that artificial intelligence, which is good at pleasing human nature, will become a hallucinogen, trapping us in a false emotion, and finally "digging up" everything easily?
However, it is still too "unfounded" to discuss such a topic now, after all, it will take a long time to develop into an artificial intelligence like the one in the movie.
At the end of 2023, there is a classic IP sequel that is also trying to answer the question of AI companions, that is, "If You Are Honest Do Not Disturb 3". "If You Are the Truth, Do Not Disturb 3" continues the story of the first two parts, but the time has come for Liang Xiaoxiao (played by Shu Qi) and Qin Fen (played by Ge You) to marry for ten years, Shu Qi joined the environmental protection organization to pick up garbage and never returned, leaving Ge You alone in the empty house looking forward to the return of the beauty. So his friend Lao Fan (played by Fan Wei) sent a bionic person who was completely reproduced with Liang Xiaoxiao to accompany him.
In the movie, the story revolves around Qin Fen and two androids and Liang Xiaoxiao, who pretends to be an android, in which although the androids can be perfect in all aspects, it is difficult to resonate with diligence, and finally find the true meaning of love with the real Liang Xiaoxiao.
In the movie, Qin Fen said that the summary of androids is very interesting, he said: "You robots can calculate, but we humans can calculate." ”
In fact, calculation is not a derogatory meaning, but a different expression, Liang Xiaoxiao left because she wanted to know whether her lover still loved her, she was calculating; Qin Fen looked forward to his lover returning to his side, but he didn't open his mouth to keep it, and made a fake smile by his side, so he was also calculating. From this point of view, AI cannot be counted to this point, and this is also an insurmountable gap between it and humans.
Write at the end
With the continuous upgrading of artificial intelligence technology and social algorithms, it is foreseeable that AI social networking will be able to better meet the personalized and diversified social needs of users, and create a richer and more interesting social experience for users. In addition, with the development of emerging technologies such as AI, 5G, and cloud computing, AI social networking will also connect users around the world more conveniently and smoothly, becoming an important innovation force in the social field.
However, we believe that where the boundary of AI social networking is also critical, and how to make people feel the difference between AI companion and reality while it makes people feel the difference between it and reality will also become a difficult point for manufacturers to overcome.