Would you like sex chat Y/N beep boop
February 21, 2016 8:56 PM Subscribe
Sex bots don't even have to be that good to do their job....Their sole purpose is to get the dater to want to chat more. And a pent-up dude online is the easiest mark. As acclaimed AI researcher Bruce Wilcox puts it, "Many people online want to talk about sex. With chat bots, they don't require a lot of convincing."--Rolling Stone on Online Dating's Sex Bot Con Job
I've been reading way too many articles about the sex bot revolution that I have to stop myself every few seconds in this article and go "no, no, different kind of bot." It's sort of funny that we have tons and tons of sex-bots and none are the kind that MRA's want. Bots to have sex with vs Automated Sex Chats.
This might be one of the best articles I've read on Ashley Madison. Just, the graphics on Customer Conversion alone are worth really thinking about. The article meanders for a few paragraphs before introducing me to "teledildonics" which might be the worst name for anything, ever. Awful. People have garments that "vibrate" when the person watching them through webcam hits their keyboard. Because someone watched the Milgram experiment and was like "With a few easy adjustments we can turn that into sex."
posted by Neronomius at 9:58 PM on February 21, 2016 [6 favorites]
This might be one of the best articles I've read on Ashley Madison. Just, the graphics on Customer Conversion alone are worth really thinking about. The article meanders for a few paragraphs before introducing me to "teledildonics" which might be the worst name for anything, ever. Awful. People have garments that "vibrate" when the person watching them through webcam hits their keyboard. Because someone watched the Milgram experiment and was like "With a few easy adjustments we can turn that into sex."
posted by Neronomius at 9:58 PM on February 21, 2016 [6 favorites]
I thought this was going to be about sex bot cron jobs.
posted by dirigibleman at 10:19 PM on February 21, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by dirigibleman at 10:19 PM on February 21, 2016 [7 favorites]
"teledildonics" which might be the worst name for anything, ever
I know, right? You can't mix a Greek prefix with, uh, whatever the etymology of "dildo" is. (Westron dilda?)
posted by No-sword at 10:30 PM on February 21, 2016 [5 favorites]
I know, right? You can't mix a Greek prefix with, uh, whatever the etymology of "dildo" is. (Westron dilda?)
posted by No-sword at 10:30 PM on February 21, 2016 [5 favorites]
If the salesperson says the sexbot will stop when it hears the safeword, ask them if the sexbot is Turing Decidable. If they say it's only Turing Recognizable, but halting is not a problem, run the hell away.
posted by mccarty.tim at 10:30 PM on February 21, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by mccarty.tim at 10:30 PM on February 21, 2016 [8 favorites]
Pimpin ain't dead,
it just moved to the web
Bitch ain't gotta hit the track,
ain't gotta give no tricks no head
Ain't got to give no tricks no pussy,
just cameras and screens
Easiest money you can get,
it's the American Dream
UGK -- 2007.
Apparently technology is also disrupting the salad days of web pimping.
posted by lkc at 10:53 PM on February 21, 2016
it just moved to the web
Bitch ain't gotta hit the track,
ain't gotta give no tricks no head
Ain't got to give no tricks no pussy,
just cameras and screens
Easiest money you can get,
it's the American Dream
UGK -- 2007.
Apparently technology is also disrupting the salad days of web pimping.
posted by lkc at 10:53 PM on February 21, 2016
AFF is an odd choice as the "principled" interviewee here. To me, they don't really seem like they're at the cutting edge of online casual-sex matchmaking -- their anti-spam strategy is that the founder/owner logs on every day and manually reviews signups?
and I'm not normally one to call out typos in articles, but...
posted by aaronbeekay at 10:58 PM on February 21, 2016 [3 favorites]
I don't know if I can disclose this," Conru says, "but recently, I had a guy do a search to see, like, WhiteHouse.gov,-- wait, this guy, "among the smartest and most respected people in the online dating business", is having employees paw through customer records for giggles...?
and I'm not normally one to call out typos in articles, but...
As a matter of principal, he wants his $100 back...ouch.
posted by aaronbeekay at 10:58 PM on February 21, 2016 [3 favorites]
"teledildonics" which might be the worst name for anything, ever. Awful.
Coined by the same man who brought us the term Hypertext.
A personal hero.
posted by St. Sorryass at 12:06 AM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
Coined by the same man who brought us the term Hypertext.
A personal hero.
posted by St. Sorryass at 12:06 AM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
I'm thrilled to see the word teledildonics being used again in such a short space of time. It was in the Christian couple making sex toys article last week.
I, as one in a LDR, welcome our teledildonic overlords.
posted by Braeburn at 1:13 AM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
I, as one in a LDR, welcome our teledildonic overlords.
posted by Braeburn at 1:13 AM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
Hypertext is a way sexier word than Teledildonics.
Hyper. Text.
Tele.Dild.Onics.
(which one can you imagine your partner whispering sexily into your ear. Like, without a TON of effort)
And yeah, including AFF is a little weird. But maybe they're one of the biggest fish in the pond? The market for actual sex cam websites (myfreecams mostly) is pretty huge. There's almost no chance of meeting the star in real life (which comes as a relief to most in front of the camera I imagine) but you're definitely not talking to a bot (yet).
posted by Neronomius at 1:18 AM on February 22, 2016
Hyper. Text.
Tele.Dild.Onics.
(which one can you imagine your partner whispering sexily into your ear. Like, without a TON of effort)
And yeah, including AFF is a little weird. But maybe they're one of the biggest fish in the pond? The market for actual sex cam websites (myfreecams mostly) is pretty huge. There's almost no chance of meeting the star in real life (which comes as a relief to most in front of the camera I imagine) but you're definitely not talking to a bot (yet).
posted by Neronomius at 1:18 AM on February 22, 2016
I often wonder who would fall for one of those Nigerian prince-type scams, then I read things like this.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:35 AM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:35 AM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
DON’T DATE ROBOTS.
Should have been the tagline for Ex Machina.
posted by sively at 1:41 AM on February 22, 2016 [4 favorites]
Should have been the tagline for Ex Machina.
posted by sively at 1:41 AM on February 22, 2016 [4 favorites]
sex bot cron jobs
...is the name of my Kraftwerk/Soft Cell fusion tribute band.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:32 AM on February 22, 2016 [11 favorites]
...is the name of my Kraftwerk/Soft Cell fusion tribute band.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:32 AM on February 22, 2016 [11 favorites]
Apparently technology is also disrupting the salad days of web pimping.
I feel confident that if Pimp C was still with us today, he would be one of the leading visionaries in the field of teledildonics.
posted by milarepa at 3:01 AM on February 22, 2016
I feel confident that if Pimp C was still with us today, he would be one of the leading visionaries in the field of teledildonics.
posted by milarepa at 3:01 AM on February 22, 2016
posted by Captain l'escalier at 3:15 AM on February 22, 2016 [4 favorites]
The Milgram experiment wasn't sexy enough already?
A small part of me just wondered what sort of porn you watch..
The rest of me shut that part down with a resounding "HELLNOPE."
posted by louche mustachio at 4:16 AM on February 22, 2016 [5 favorites]
Because someone watched the Milgram experimentjust about anything and was like "With a few easy adjustments we can turn that into sex."
Hi, welcome to the internet.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:33 AM on February 22, 2016 [6 favorites]
Hi, welcome to the internet.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:33 AM on February 22, 2016 [6 favorites]
Somebody who opens with "I don't know if I can disclose this" and then says it anyway is not building confidence as a social media business owner.
posted by ardgedee at 5:07 AM on February 22, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by ardgedee at 5:07 AM on February 22, 2016 [3 favorites]
In 2012, Doriana Silva, a former Ashley Madison employee in Toronto, sued Avid Life Media for $20 million complaining that she suffered from repetitive strain injury while creating over 1,000 sexbots — known within the company as "Ashley's Angels" — for the site.
That is amazing. I'm a little sorry that the case settled; I'd really like to have seen what a judge would do with those facts.
posted by Aravis76 at 5:20 AM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
That is amazing. I'm a little sorry that the case settled; I'd really like to have seen what a judge would do with those facts.
posted by Aravis76 at 5:20 AM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
Annoying: Autoplaying video with sound. Thanks Rolling Stone, sheesh.
Bloggers poured over the data, estimating that of the 5.5 million female profiles on the site, as few as 12,000 were real women — allegations that Ashley Madison denied.
"— allegations that [the company whose business model would be utterly destroyed if they were believed] denied."
This is hilarious yes, but also heartbreaking, indicative of a vast sea of human sadness. And of course, there is no high level of human emotion out there so sacred that there isn't some Silicon Valley company watching it with dollar signs in its demonic eyes.
"Ashley's Angels," eh? Yeah, when they get their wings it's not a bell that is heard but rather a different sound.
posted by JHarris at 6:10 AM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
Bloggers poured over the data, estimating that of the 5.5 million female profiles on the site, as few as 12,000 were real women — allegations that Ashley Madison denied.
"— allegations that [the company whose business model would be utterly destroyed if they were believed] denied."
This is hilarious yes, but also heartbreaking, indicative of a vast sea of human sadness. And of course, there is no high level of human emotion out there so sacred that there isn't some Silicon Valley company watching it with dollar signs in its demonic eyes.
"Ashley's Angels," eh? Yeah, when they get their wings it's not a bell that is heard but rather a different sound.
posted by JHarris at 6:10 AM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
I'm having a hard time believing that these chatbots are either that convincing, or that AFF doesn't use them. Like with a lot of tech writing, RS comes off as very credulous and naive here.
posted by codacorolla at 6:25 AM on February 22, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by codacorolla at 6:25 AM on February 22, 2016 [3 favorites]
Conru, who launched the site shortly after getting his doctorate as a means to meet women,
I'm sure he did. This is like a bottomless pit of sleaze. How about that word "sleaze" by the way, it causes one to imagine some disgusting physical substance.
"I don't know if I can disclose this," Conru says, "but recently, I had a guy do a search to see, like, WhiteHouse.gov, and we found that there are lots of .govs, and a lot of .edus."
"I don't know if I can disclose this -- oops I'm always halfway through disclosing it, and how about let's make it a fact that's impossible for you to substantiate too, sure."
"If I wanted to boost our revenue and move to the Cayman Islands, we could probably double our revenue simply by using bots," he says. "And our bots would kick ass."
"Ass, gentlemen. Whether it's kicked, shown or gotten, it is the sole currency of the future, and we have discovered a way to counterfeit it!"
posted by JHarris at 6:26 AM on February 22, 2016 [8 favorites]
I'm sure he did. This is like a bottomless pit of sleaze. How about that word "sleaze" by the way, it causes one to imagine some disgusting physical substance.
"I don't know if I can disclose this," Conru says, "but recently, I had a guy do a search to see, like, WhiteHouse.gov, and we found that there are lots of .govs, and a lot of .edus."
"I don't know if I can disclose this -- oops I'm always halfway through disclosing it, and how about let's make it a fact that's impossible for you to substantiate too, sure."
"If I wanted to boost our revenue and move to the Cayman Islands, we could probably double our revenue simply by using bots," he says. "And our bots would kick ass."
"Ass, gentlemen. Whether it's kicked, shown or gotten, it is the sole currency of the future, and we have discovered a way to counterfeit it!"
posted by JHarris at 6:26 AM on February 22, 2016 [8 favorites]
I'm having a hard time believing that these chatbots are either that convincing, or that AFF doesn't use them.
I have no problem believing it at all. Your average random horny guy looking for cyberbooty is not, shall we say, the most discriminating Turing tester out there, and the range of possible chatbot responses and triggers is far from astronomic in size. What is more, they have presumably a few real life people engaging in virtual sexytimes on their own chat servers, the less-oily of their output free to be logged, sorted, mechanized, and shoveled like sludge through one of the more grimly hilarious Markov processes out there.
You remember the false Maria from Metropolis? Meet her 21st century counterpart.
posted by JHarris at 6:34 AM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
I have no problem believing it at all. Your average random horny guy looking for cyberbooty is not, shall we say, the most discriminating Turing tester out there, and the range of possible chatbot responses and triggers is far from astronomic in size. What is more, they have presumably a few real life people engaging in virtual sexytimes on their own chat servers, the less-oily of their output free to be logged, sorted, mechanized, and shoveled like sludge through one of the more grimly hilarious Markov processes out there.
You remember the false Maria from Metropolis? Meet her 21st century counterpart.
posted by JHarris at 6:34 AM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
When he saw an ad for the dating site Ashley Madison, which boasted 36 million members and the tagline, "Life is short, have an affair," he decided to check it out. "It seemed like a very active community," he says.
Ashley Madison: It seemed like a very active community.
posted by ignignokt at 8:02 AM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
Ashley Madison: It seemed like a very active community.
posted by ignignokt at 8:02 AM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
> Like with a lot of tech writing, RS comes off as very credulous and naive here.
Not a single person says anything that's not motivated by their professional agenda. The hookup site owners trash talk the other hookup sites. The chatbot detection company expert expounds on the distressing multitude of chatbots. It leaves the article just as suspect as its topic.
posted by ardgedee at 8:31 AM on February 22, 2016
Not a single person says anything that's not motivated by their professional agenda. The hookup site owners trash talk the other hookup sites. The chatbot detection company expert expounds on the distressing multitude of chatbots. It leaves the article just as suspect as its topic.
posted by ardgedee at 8:31 AM on February 22, 2016
Sex chatbots are pretty old. There were ones that went around AIM in the late nineties trying to get people to porn sites. They had fixed scripts that did not parse responses at all – they just noted there was one, then went on to the next line in the script. As a result, people were able to post some pretty funny transcripts to their blogs. That said, I'd bet that so many of these existed because they were worth more than they cost, at the least.
I think brains are just ready to look out for sex stuff. This bot (sorry: self-link) simply takes random words, then finds one more related word, and fills in the "___ in the street but a ___ in the sheets" template. But it does more often than not churn out stuff that does sound innuendo-y because I think people are on the lookout for innuendo!
It's not dissimilar from the way people make up epic narratives about Dwarf Fortress runs or see patterns in random clouds of numbers.
posted by ignignokt at 8:34 AM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
As acclaimed AI researcher Bruce Wilcox puts it, "Many people online want to talk about sex. With chat bots, they don't require a lot of convincing."You can work really hard to make a bot sound meaningful in some sense or another, but simply picking the right domain and context for the bot can go much further in making it mean something to humans than technical sophistication or labor. e.g. Making a dumb knock knock joke bot vs. a bot that tells fortunes in whole sentences. This is just one of those domains where humans Want to Believe.
I think brains are just ready to look out for sex stuff. This bot (sorry: self-link) simply takes random words, then finds one more related word, and fills in the "___ in the street but a ___ in the sheets" template. But it does more often than not churn out stuff that does sound innuendo-y because I think people are on the lookout for innuendo!
It's not dissimilar from the way people make up epic narratives about Dwarf Fortress runs or see patterns in random clouds of numbers.
posted by ignignokt at 8:34 AM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
Metafilter bots, on the other hand, have to be great at their job. You think it's easy for this AI to keep coming up wiIN YOUR AREA WANT TO CHAT
posted by clawsoon at 9:05 AM on February 22, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 9:05 AM on February 22, 2016 [5 favorites]
Wait so is it actually possible to have sex with people through AFF or not? Because it's always looked like a far more blatant scam than Ashley Madison.
posted by atoxyl at 11:17 AM on February 22, 2016
posted by atoxyl at 11:17 AM on February 22, 2016
wait'll you get a load of straight men
Phwoar!
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:46 AM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
Phwoar!
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:46 AM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
Conru, who launched the site shortly after getting his doctorate as a means to meet women,
Huh, that's why I got my doctorate too.
posted by wilko at 2:42 PM on February 22, 2016 [3 favorites]
Huh, that's why I got my doctorate too.
posted by wilko at 2:42 PM on February 22, 2016 [3 favorites]
In fact, for all the outrage over Ashley Madison's fake femmes, the company had been disclosing its use of "Ashley's Angels" for years in its own Terms of Service as an "attempt to simulate communications with real members to encourage more conversation." Today, that language is gone, but there's still a clause with wiggle room: "You agree that some of the features of our Site and our Service are intended to provide entertainment."
That sentence gets Ashley Madison out of trouble for presenting chatbots posing as humans? Would that hold up in court? It's rather an artier term of art than usual, isn't it?
posted by JHarris at 5:25 PM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
That sentence gets Ashley Madison out of trouble for presenting chatbots posing as humans? Would that hold up in court? It's rather an artier term of art than usual, isn't it?
posted by JHarris at 5:25 PM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
"Wait so is it actually possible to have sex with people through AFF or not? Because it's always looked like a far more blatant scam than Ashley Madison."
Atoxyl, yes both actually. Done it. More than once with each and have enduring friendships.
The bots have gotten really annoying on AM. They're easy to spot by anyone with a brain but I've probably been suckered more than once. Bye, AM
The difference in the business models is that with AM it costs you to contact anyone. So, caveat emptor. With AFF it's a flat fee and unlimited communication.
I believe that AFF doesn't create bots. That's not to say there aren't others creating false profiles for whatever nefarious purposes.
posted by raider at 7:34 PM on February 22, 2016
Atoxyl, yes both actually. Done it. More than once with each and have enduring friendships.
The bots have gotten really annoying on AM. They're easy to spot by anyone with a brain but I've probably been suckered more than once. Bye, AM
The difference in the business models is that with AM it costs you to contact anyone. So, caveat emptor. With AFF it's a flat fee and unlimited communication.
I believe that AFF doesn't create bots. That's not to say there aren't others creating false profiles for whatever nefarious purposes.
posted by raider at 7:34 PM on February 22, 2016
I ran into this problem on Yahoo personals over a decade ago.
posted by daHIFI at 8:01 PM on February 29, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by daHIFI at 8:01 PM on February 29, 2016 [1 favorite]
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