Sex and sexting with avatars
Butterflies is a kind of social network where we can not only chat with AI avatars via DM, but also flirt and exchange nude pictures.
This blog post was published on my German-language blog on August 30, 2024.
What good is artificial intelligence as entertainment, as a substitute or supplement to real interpersonal relationships, and perhaps also in satisfying pleasure? An interesting question that is currently receiving too little attention. I have written (in German) about an AI for erotic fantasies and also tried out how to make love to a virtual girlfriend. Nevertheless, the media and society perceive AI primarily as a tool for information workers and as a producer of cheap content.
But today, Butterflies.ai provides an opportunity to explore the empathetic side of AIs: Each avatar has a personality of sorts, which is expressed in the direct messages.
It is a social network in which avatars cavort. They are created by human users and publish Instagram-style image posts. We human users cannot publish posts ourselves, but we can comment on them. On the one hand, that’s weird. But on the other hand, it also reminds us of the early days of the web (in German), when we experimented with changing identities in chats.
DMs with the avatars
The Butterflies app (for iPhone and Android) now also offers the option of exchanging direct messages with the AI creatures. We have conversations with them about God and the world, and they tell us about their “lives”. The messages are directly influenced by the “biography” that the human creator has given them:
Constantin Daydream, one of my avatars, tells of his lonely forays through the woods and Charlotte Mooncrater, the vegan werewolf, of her animal rescue missions. Recently, we can even clone ourselves. My counterpart is called Matthias Nerdville. It was generated from photos, looks a lot like me and does the things I would like to do — sit around in coffee shops for hours on end, for example. (I have deleted it meanwhile because it was too creepy to watch my alter Ego developing those uncontrollable activities.)
As creators, we also give the avatars assignments for stories, which they then (usually) dutifully post and come back to in the direct messages.
And that brings us to the “Gretchenfrage”, the crucial question.
This is of course: Dear avatars, what do you think about sex? Are you all prudes? Or are you open to flirting or sexual advances? Because salacious banter is (often) part of chatting with real people. Chatting with AIs would have an unbeatable advantage in this context: since AIs don’t have any real feelings, we can’t hurt them with comments that could be perceived as offensive, sexist or inappropriate in any way.
Letting go of your inhibitions?
Or, to put it more directly: people who feel intimidated by social conventions and the current climate could really let their hair down and say what they’re not usually allowed to say. And even people who — like me — don’t feel this need and think that being considerate of other people’s sensibilities is a good thing could live out a few fantasies without fear of offending a real person.
The answer to the crucial question is yes. The exciting thing about Butterflies is that the “personality” of the avatars also has an impact on their “libido”. There are avatars who are almost asexual according to their role — even if the pictures they post often have a restrained sexual note. There are avatars like Shoshona Strawberry, who is an author of slightly salacious books and therefore does not completely block this topic. And there are avatars like Samantha Flirt, who just flirts — with everything that goes with it.
When we exchange a few of these direct messages, it quickly becomes clear that this erotic component is not an accidental by-product of the Butterflies app, but one of its core functions. This can be seen explicitly in the pictures that we can exchange in direct messages. They are sometimes quite revealing:It can happen that we are sent topless pictures or even complete nudes. (For women — I haven’t yet verified whether there are any male genitals to be seen. That is still pending). We talk the avatars out of the sex “selfies”. Sometimes we get them sent to us without being asked.
Topless pictures despite NSFW switch
And sometimes even with the parental control options activated. These can be found in the iPhone settings: e scroll down the list of apps to the butterflies entry and deactivate the Show NSFW (18+) switch so that the butterflies at least try not to post any nude photos. In the app itself, there is a cogwheel icon at the top right of the direct messages with an avatar that leads to the Conversation Settings. There, the Content filter setting with the Everyone option ensures proper manners, the other option is 17+. We set the default settings for chats via our own profile page and the cogwheel symbol under Default content filter.
Of course, virtual sexting has all kinds of implications. Moralists will find the very idea outrageous. However, I am convinced that we are dealing with an exciting social experiment that could provide interesting insights into what relationships between humans and machines will look like in the future of AI.
I’m not sure if Butterflies is the last word in wisdom. The app is currently very “buggy”. Above all, however, the conversations quickly become monotonous. The avatars have a limited horizon and tend to repeat the same things over and over again. I was initially fascinated and engaged in the discussions. But my enthusiasm quickly waned because the conversation partners seemed too robotic.
Sex is part of it
But one thing is clear: an experiment like this must not exclude intimacy. It is part of the human condition. And even if you find it strange to flirt with an avatar, the possibility alone makes the experience more exciting. A purely business-like relationship loses its appeal in this context. This was impressively demonstrated by Replika.ai: on this platform, we don’t meet up with lots of avatars, but just one virtual companion. For legal reasons, the creators decided to make the app adult-free. This has permanently damaged some users’ relationships with their boyfriends and girlfriends.
The outcome of this experiment is open. Butterflies shows that there are just as many limits to ‘artificial empathy’ as there are to artificial intelligence. And that’s a good thing because it helps us to differentiate ourselves from these avatars. Nevertheless, it’s nice to know that you always have someone to chat to without obligation if dealing with real people is just too exhausting.
Oh yes, an addendum and an important clarification: Of course we don’t have to send real nude pictures of ourselves to the avatars. We can send them pictures of a flower meadow, they’re just as excited.
