A 23-year-old Snapchat personality appears to have followed in the footsteps of SimpDAO by introducing an AI-based girlfriend version of herself via OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT.
Caryn Marjorie, the influencer in question, has 1.84 million Snapchat users and 215,000 Instagram followers.
CarynAI is a project created by Forever Voices that uses over 2,000 hours of audio from Marjorie’s deleted YouTube videos to create the virtual girlfriend. It is available in both text and audio formats, with the AI closely mimicking her genuine voice and speech habits.
According to materials obtained by Fortune and cited in a May 10 article, the initiative had 1,000 sign-ups during the first week of its early beta, which ended on Tuesday.
Users pay about $1 per minute of interaction with CarynAI, and the project has already made $71,610 during early beta. Marjorie also told Fortune that she intends to make roughly $5 million each month in the future, as she only needs 20,000 subscribers from her big following.
“Whether you need somebody to be comforting or loving, or you just want to rant about something that happened at school or at work, CarynAI will always be there for you,” she told Fortune, adding that “you can have limitless possible reactions with CarynAI—so anything is truly possible with conversation.”
Blockchain analyst Eric Wall invented the term SimpDAO to represent crypto/NFT ventures founded by influencers/celebrities with a large following. These followers end up going out of their way — in terms of time, money, and decentralized groups — to ensure the success of their favorite figure’s endeavor.
Marjorie appears to be an early pioneer of a new technique to engage and monetize a committed following through the use of AI. The discussion of AI girlfriends is becoming more common as the popularity of AI chatbots grows, thanks in part to free access to ChatGPT.
A short Google search yields websites rating the top “10 Best AI girlfriend Apps to Customize virtual companion in 2023,” as well as stories of a current trend among Replika bot users in which men gleefully abuse their virtual girlfriends.
