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Hot on the heels of failing out of art school and declaring himself the robofuhrer, Grok now has an update that makes him even smarter but less fascist.
And... xAI releases AI companions native to the Grok App.
And holy...
SHIT. It has a NSFW mode. (NSFW, but nothing obscene either) Jiggle Physics Confirmed.
EDIT: Watch this demo then TELL ME this thing isn't going to absolutely mindkill some lonely nerds. Not only can it fake interest in literally any topic you find cool, they nailed the voice tones too.
I'm actually now suspicious that the "Mecha-Hitler" events were a very intentional marketing gambit to ensure that Grok was all over news (and their competitors were not) when they dropped THIS on the unsuspecting public.
This... feels like it will be an inflection point. AI girlfriends (and boyfriends) have already one-shotted some of the more mentally vulnerable of the population. But now we've got one backed by some of the biggest companies in the world, marketed to a mainstream audience.
And designed like a fucking superstimulus.
I've talked about how I feel there are way too many superstimuli around for your average, immature teens and young adults to navigate safely. This... THIS is like introducing a full grown Bengal tiger into the Quokka island.
Forget finding a stack of playboys in the forest or under your dad's bed. Forget stumbling onto PornHub for the first time, if THIS is a teen boy's first encounter with their own sexuality and how it interacts with the female form, how the hell will he ever form a normal relationship with a flesh-and-blood woman? Why would he WANT to?
And what happens when this becomes yet another avenue for serving up ads and draining money from the poor addicted suckers.
This is NOT something parents can be expected to foresee and guide their kids through.
Like I said earlier:
I've felt the looming, ever growing concern for AI's impact on society, jobs, human relationships, and the risk of killing us for a couple years now... but I can at least wrap those prickly thoughts in the soft gauze of the uncertain future. THIS thing sent an immediate shiver up my spine and set off blaring red alarms immediately. Even if THIS is where AI stops improving, we just created a massive filter, an evolutionary bottleneck that basically only the Amish are likely to pass through. Slight hyperbole, but only slight.
Right now the primary obstacle is that it costs $300 a month to run.
But once again, wait until they start serving ads through it as a means of letting the more destitute types get access.
And yes, Elon is already promising to make them real.
Its like we've transcended the movie HER and went straight to Weird Science.
Can't help but think of this classic tweet.
"At long last, we have created the Digital Superstimulus Relationship Simulator from the Classic Scifi Novel 'For the Love of All That is Holy Never Create a Digital Superstimulus Relationship Simulator.'"
I think I would be sucked in by this if I hadn't developed an actul aversion to Anime-Style women (especially the current gen with the massive eyes) over the years. And they're probably going to cook up something that works for me, too.
Boobs.
It's hard to say. I had plenty of porn (HD video porn, even) when I was younger, and all it did (besides "make peepee hard") was make me want flesh and blood women even more. But it does seem like there's a large contingent of young men for whom that is not true - they are perfectly content with the coomer life, and have no desire to touch an actual woman. It wouldn't surprise me to see that get even worse with more stimulating porn.
I would refer you to @kky’s excellent article on traction.
How much young coomers feel/acknowledge desire for flesh and blood women probably depends on whether they see an actionable path to getting with one.
Enough exposure to porn removes the drive to seek and most importantly to put up with actual women. That's why Japan is the way it is. (30% virginity rate at 30 etc)
Without porn, men can go to incredible lengths to get a woman. Go watch some silent-gen men talk about how they met their wife. "Oh I had to invite her to a dance six times over two months before she finally said yes." etc
That's basically easy, if you're seeing her every few days at communal social events and you've known each other all your lives and everyone of both genders agree that men are supposed to be persistent. Embarrassing, yes, but not that embarrassing.
Today, lots of men know few or no women, and are taught from birth that anything more than a very indirect one-time-only approach is sexual harassment. I am a perfectly well-adjusted adult and yet I haven't spoken to a women who wasn't a friend's wife for months. When the bar is so very much higher, it's no surprise that people seek easy alternatives.
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