A 23-year-old Snapchat star, Caryn Marjorie, has monetized her digital persona in an innovative and highly profitable way. Using GPT, she has launched CarynAI, an AI representation of herself offering virtual companionship at a rate of $1 per minute.

Key points about CarynAI and its success so far:

Caryn has a substantial follower base on Snapchat, with 1.8 million followers.

In just 1 week, over 1,000 virtual boyfriends have signed up to interact with the AI, generating over $67,610.

Some estimates suggests that if even 1% of her 1.8 million followers subscribe to CarynAI, she could potentially earn an estimated $5 million per month, although I feel these numbers are highly subject to various factors including churn and usage rate.

The company behind CarynAI is called Forever Voices and they constructed CarynAI by analyzing 2,000 hours of Marjorie’s YouTube content, which they used to build a personality engine. They’ve also made chatbot versions of Donald Trump, Steve Jobs and Taylor Swift to be used on a pay-per-use basis.

Despite the financial success, ethical concerns around CarynAI and similar AI applications are raising eyebrows and rightfully so:

CarynAI was not designed for NSFW conversations, yet some users have managed to ‘jail-break’ the AI for potentially inappropriate or malicious uses.

Caryn’s original intention was to provide companionship and alleviate loneliness in a non-exploitative manner, but there are concerns about potential misuse.

Ethical considerations around generative AI models, both in image and text modalities, are becoming increasingly relevant and challenging.

What’s your take on such applications (which are inevitable given the AI proliferation) and it’s ethical concerns?

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