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PaperclipPerfector  22hr ago (text post)   3386 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

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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:

"Who would win, a literal child whose brain hasn't even developed higher reasoning, with a smartphone and internet access, or a remorseless, massive corporation that has spent millions upon millions of dollars optimizing its products and services for extracting money from every single person it gets its clutches on?"

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.

I find it curious the assumption that this is primarily a superstimulus which will target gooner men, when the thing simulated, it is a character which can have a relationship. AKA something appealing to women. This could easily be internet porn for the femcels, rather than a replacement for internet porn for incels.

There's a pretty significant demographic of men (and sometimes even straight men) who get into really heavy parasocial relationships in situations like OnlyFans et all.

Right. This is just the next step of a pattern that is already established. Money exchanged for the feeling of romantic or sexual attention/attraction.

They were already having a fully artificial 'relationship' with a digital 'woman' who doesn't know of their existence.

This just cuts out the need for a woman in the loop at all.

It may be simulating a character, but I'm not sure if the current generation of AI partners is ready for prime time for most femcels. Just going off of vibes, Grok Companion feels like something that will appeal far more to male gooners, since the pretty rudimentary animations and voice quality seems good enough to be a porn fantasy, but not really good enough to be a full character.

The gameified lovemeter of Grok Companion seems male-gooner-coded and not "character simulacrum for femcel" coded.

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