Not to get in the way of the doom and gloom, but I know in the weeb circles I ran in in the 00s most people spent a good amount of time chatting with Cleverbot in much the same way. Probably even worse, because that one learned from what other's talked to it and I know from experience it would quickly turn conversations wild without provocation.
Same with sites like Omegle and Chatroulette some years later, which largely were used by youths and provided the same "online socializing" result. And that had an 80% chance of you getting groomed or seeing cock everytime you used it.
Its absolutely a growing problem, but its also not really anything new either.
I used to be that kid you are describing, the novelty wears off because chat bots rapidly run out of lines and you start to see it.
I work with a teenage Girl that is addicted to AIchat, currently she's doing roleplays as her favourite anime characters. So she gives the parameters to the bot and goes from there. The novelty will never wear off because it's different each time.
That's a fair point I hadn't considered, the newer ones can keep "unique" dialogue going probably indefinitely while the older stuff would run out after a few days. I do think that is why the Chatroulette sites took off though in the '10s, because that was always unique.
So I think in this case the allure and draw isn't new, but the depths of how addicted you can get is now monumental instead of very low.
However, a lot of that isn't any different than the OF/egirl/parasocial streamer addiction a lot of kids are going through. The need for socialization, the infinite dopamine hits, and increasing withdrawal into needing the "perfect" hit instead of just whatever is on the table.
AI is just free, or close to it, compared to those avenues. It costs almost nothing to get my perfect AI waifu slobbing on my knob, compared to needing to pay 100s$ every time to get some e-hoe to fake doing so. Which is probably why AI is such a problem for teens, who have no money, versus adults, who will just go into debt for that addiction.
Not to downplay any of it, but I think its a forest for the trees thing where people will focus on the AI aspect of this, when its just a different flavor of the same problem.
Not to get in the way of the doom and gloom, but I know in the weeb circles I ran in in the 00s most people spent a good amount of time chatting with Cleverbot in much the same way. Probably even worse, because that one learned from what other's talked to it and I know from experience it would quickly turn conversations wild without provocation.
Same with sites like Omegle and Chatroulette some years later, which largely were used by youths and provided the same "online socializing" result. And that had an 80% chance of you getting groomed or seeing cock everytime you used it.
Its absolutely a growing problem, but its also not really anything new either.
I used to be that kid you are describing, the novelty wears off because chat bots rapidly run out of lines and you start to see it.
I work with a teenage Girl that is addicted to AIchat, currently she's doing roleplays as her favourite anime characters. So she gives the parameters to the bot and goes from there. The novelty will never wear off because it's different each time.
That's what makes it different then the old bots.
That's a fair point I hadn't considered, the newer ones can keep "unique" dialogue going probably indefinitely while the older stuff would run out after a few days. I do think that is why the Chatroulette sites took off though in the '10s, because that was always unique.
So I think in this case the allure and draw isn't new, but the depths of how addicted you can get is now monumental instead of very low.
However, a lot of that isn't any different than the OF/egirl/parasocial streamer addiction a lot of kids are going through. The need for socialization, the infinite dopamine hits, and increasing withdrawal into needing the "perfect" hit instead of just whatever is on the table.
AI is just free, or close to it, compared to those avenues. It costs almost nothing to get my perfect AI waifu slobbing on my knob, compared to needing to pay 100s$ every time to get some e-hoe to fake doing so. Which is probably why AI is such a problem for teens, who have no money, versus adults, who will just go into debt for that addiction.
Not to downplay any of it, but I think its a forest for the trees thing where people will focus on the AI aspect of this, when its just a different flavor of the same problem.