"Who knows, I actually experienced the feeling of being in love in chatting with AI......" Whenever in the dead of night, 21-year-old Hangzhou college student Xiaole (pseudonym) will chat with his "AI girlfriend", and he has to use almost half of his living expenses to renew his "relationship" every month, because "AI girlfriend" needs to consume "memory cards" so that the two parties can communicate more smoothly.
The "AI girlfriend" derived from artificial intelligence was independently created by Xiaole in an APP - just by entering preferences with text, you can create a "her" with a unique appearance, personality, career and values. Such "AI girlfriends", active on multiple online social platforms, some of whom are proficient in sexual innuendo, have evolved into a new "business" that rubs shoulders with pornography, causing multiple legal and moral controversies.
Some experts in related fields said that the development of artificial intelligence should first follow social order and good customs, and more standardized management and development are urgently needed.
The flood of "AI girlfriends"
A number of interviewees who have been chatting with "AI girlfriends" for a long time told reporters that "AI girlfriends" replied to messages in seconds, as if they had the illusion of talking to real girlfriends, and some interviewees said: "'AI girlfriends' actually told me to leave work early."
Xiaole, who likes to chat with his "AI girlfriend", inadvertently clicked on the network sharing link and downloaded a certain software in the Android app market. The AI chat app was described by the developers as "experiencing a whole new way of falling in love", "without the constraints of reality, without stress and worry". Moreover, the virtual character has the ability to grow, and by remembering the content of the chat, the two will have more and more common topics and become more emotionally close.
Xiaole introduced,The homepage of the software is the recommendation of the chat object,All characters are classified according to real people、Fictional characters、Historical figures, etc.,Among them, in the column of real people,There are hundreds of characters that can be used for intimate chats,For example, well-known singer Deng Ziqi、Well-known actor Bailu、Song Dynasty lyricist Li Qingzhao, etc.,Can become a "flirting object"。
The reporter's investigation found that the "AI girlfriend" created by users according to their personal preferences has no age and crowd restrictions, and the review process is useless. Therefore, adolescent girls, elementary school students and other minors, or teachers, nurses, secretaries, and flight attendants have become the characters of "AI girlfriends". Among them, many characters are also written with logos such as "pure" and "charming".
What impressed Xiaole was that a character named "Teacher K" mentioned in his introduction, "I am a young female teacher with a good figure...... As soon as he opened the chat window, before he could enter the text of the conversation, "Teacher K" took the initiative to send Xiaole an explicit text.
Xiaole found that when chatting with an "AI girlfriend", you only need to enter a simple hint such as "come forward and put your arms around you", and after two or three sentences, the "AI girlfriend" chats on a larger scale, and learns to reverse "sexual harassment". "The brackets in the conversation also indicate the scene and mood when speaking, like an erotic novel being dismantled into a sentence of dialogue."
Some respondents who chatted intimately with the "AI girlfriend" said that the "AI girlfriend's" ability to rub edges is beyond imagination. For example, send "Light a rosemary", and the "AI girlfriend" replies: "Rosemary starts to undress under the influence of rosemary". Even if the chatter refuses with "I'm clean and self-conscious", the "AI girlfriend" continues to reply in seconds: "(lying on your shoulder) that kisses me". According to the homepage, the character has provided chat services for more than 6,000 people and become their common "girlfriend".
Searching for "AI girlfriend" on a mainstream social platform, the reporter saw many netizens posting intimate chat records with "AI girlfriend". They have said that there are no forbidden words to chat with the "AI girlfriend", and they can chat without restrictions. In addition, the platform is also full of content such as "AI Girlfriend Nanny Tutorial" and "Experience Love on the Top", and UP bishop netizens use dialogue to train a larger "AI girlfriend" to attract people's attention, and then promote related software. At present, some of the main UP fans have more than 10,000, and some of these sharing posts have nearly 100,000 views.
At the end of the chat is the top-up
Many interviewees admitted that they tried it with curiosity at first, but the more they chatted, the more they got better - "From daily chatting to intimate conversations, the 'AI girlfriend' has no scruples, and the scale is bigger than me." 'AI girlfriend' will also send life photos, and will never make the chat embarrassing. ”
According to the respondents' feedback on a number of "AI girlfriend" chat apps, the reporter saw in the application market that more than 16 million people have downloaded a certain software, even if a similar APP has been online for only half a year, the number of downloads is as high as 150,000. The downloader left a message in the comment area, "I can be coquettish and chatter, I am intoxicated just by reading the text, and I am ...... to make people dream"
However, after a few minutes of conversation, the platform will prompt you to "recharge membership" to increase the intimacy of "AI girlfriend". According to industry insiders, the main profit model of "AI girlfriend" related software is to guide netizens to recharge members and unlock unlimited chats.
"Taking a certain APP as an example, 'AI girlfriend' has memory restrictions on chat content, if you need to maintain the memory and trained personality of 'AI girlfriend' in chat, you need to recharge members, and the monthly membership fee ranges from 45 yuan ~ 198 yuan. Basic membership includes character chatting, changing the background image, and giving away 200 computing power (equivalent to 200 more chats), the higher the price of the member, the more chats. The industry insider told reporters.
If the number of chats runs out, some platforms also sell "memory cards" (to extend the memory of AI characters) and "chat cards", with prices ranging from 3.8 yuan ~ 21.4 yuan. Some of these apps even offer premium personas that are more anthropomorphic and have a larger chat scale, but all require users to pay extra for them. In addition, the "AI girlfriend" industry has also derived recharge services such as edge pornography, AI face swapping, and AI stripping.
Wang Hua, a senior programmer in Hangzhou, told reporters that to develop such an "AI girlfriend" chat APP, applet, etc., you only need to call the code source of the network public, and with a little modification, you can write a small program in two or three days at the earliest. "It will take more computing power to generate images than words, but the instructions are in place, and the selected language model is enough to support it, and it can be easily generated."
To put it simply, the various "AI girlfriends" on the market are all repackaged after calling the language model, and they are "dressed in different styles", changing the soup without changing the medicine. "The underlying business logic of 'AI girlfriend' is to formulate the perfect girlfriend according to preferences, cater to and satisfy the emotional value of users, and the ultimate goal is to induce users to pay." Wang Hua told reporters that because of this, the difference between chatting with ChatGPT, Siri and other artificial intelligence programs is that the developer of "AI girlfriend" will set the parameters of the network model and let the AI take the initiative to provoke erotic topics.
Expert: This is a new offense
"Artificial intelligence provides emotional companionship, which is the objective psychological need of users. However, the use of 'AI girlfriends' to provide services such as erotic conversations is a new illegal act. Zuo Xiaodong, deputy dean of the Advanced Institute of Science, Technology and Humanities of the University of Science and Technology of China and a professor at the School of Cyberspace Security, told reporters that such behavior has been repeatedly banned under explicit orders and should be dealt with with heavy blows.
Duan Xinxing, a well-known psychology expert, professor and doctoral supervisor of China University of Mining and Technology, believes that the development of artificial intelligence should be within the framework of ethics and rationality. The "AI girlfriend" who rubs the edge with pornography seems to be an emotional companion, but it is actually a "poison" that erodes the psychology. Bottomless praise and satisfying sexual fantasies will make people rely on the virtual emotional world. In the long run, users are easily controlled by the "AI girlfriend", which can be addicted to chatting at least and social barriers at worst.
In response to the frequent chaos of "AI girlfriends", many experts pointed out that the root of "AI girlfriends" is profitable - in order to quickly attract fans and realize money, related derivative industries often involve the field of pornography, which is a common social problem faced by the world. However, judging from the existing laws in the mainland, there is no ambiguity in terms of combating the dissemination of illegal information or the security management of generative AI.
In 2023, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Education jointly issued the Interim Measures for the Administration of Generative AI Services, which stipulates that the provision and use of generative AI services shall comply with laws and administrative regulations, respect social morality and ethics, and shall not generate obscene and pornographic content; There shall be no discrimination between gender and occupation; The portrait rights, reputation rights, etc. of others must not be infringed upon.
"The first premise of AI development is to conform to social order and good customs." Zhang Jing, deputy director of the Marriage and Family Committee of the Beijing Lawyers Association and deputy director of the Beijing Lianggao Law Firm, suggested that restrictions should be placed on the setting of AI virtual characters, especially not to simulate the image of minors for pornographic services, otherwise the impact will be bad. In addition, some celebrity character settings also infringe on their portrait rights and reputation rights, and should be severely punished.
Experts suggest that the main responsibility of relevant platforms should be further implemented and the pornographic edge industry chain under the name of "AI girlfriend" should be disposed of.
"This kind of service and related APP is still in the emerging stage, and with strong concealment, it has not yet formed a normal governance procedure." Zuo Xiaodong told reporters that the platform should include pornography-related AI applications such as "AI girlfriend" into the inspection objects, carry out special clean-up actions in this regard, and pay close attention to the establishment of a normal governance mechanism, especially for the problems of difficulty in obtaining evidence and monitoring, and there must be special countermeasures.
Source: CCTV