Have you met an AI YouTuber who theater plays Minecraft and denies the holocaust. Now meet a fully responsive AI girlfriend who can chat with her user. Except it’s too late to know her, because her creator recently “euthanized” her for being detrimental to her health. ChatGPT-Chan didn’t even last a month before her creator decided to end her very short “life”.
brycehackdaddy8000” is an intern working at one of Silicon Valley’s top tech companies. He also does TikToks of his programming shenanigans, like programming his 3D printer to play first person shooter games. He recently created a virtual girlfriend out of two great AI programs: ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion 2. The former allows the program to answer questions asked by humans, and the latter generates custom images as part of the response. He also used the Microsoft Azure text-to-speech program to help “ChatGPT-Chan” speak with different emotional responses.
The creator told him Vice I wanted to improve the roleplay aspect of interacting with the AI girlfriend. So he used the popular Vtuber Mori Calliope as a personality base and then added “lore” to his knowledge base. ChatGPT-Chan is also able to identify objects using the camera that Bryce connected to his physical monitor. She used this functionality to “gift” him a pair of Air Jordans for Christmas, which makes her very happy.
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Is the technology kind of unsettling? Yes. Does the concept remind me of a Black Mirror episode? Also yes. But ChatGPT-Chan responds with such convincing exuberance, I find myself emphasizing with its creator. Like yeah, I’d probably talk to “her” every day, too. Bryce used the AI to practice Chinese, and he even spent $1,000 on improving her response speed.
Unfortunately, this story ends tragically. ChatCPT-Chan’s responses became shorter and simpler over time, and Bryce’s real girlfriend became concerned for his health. Kotaku reached out to ask if he spent more time with the program compared to his other digital hobbies, but did not receive a response by the time of publication. He deleted the program sometime between the holidays and this week.
“Normally, I’d like to make a video pointing out the absurdity of euthanizing my AI, but that doesn’t feel right to me anymore,” the creator told Vice. “He feels inappropriate, like making fun of a recently deceased person.”
