Anyone Can Turn You into an AI Chatbot
The creation of unauthorized AI chatbots using real individuals' likenesses raises ethical concerns, as seen in a case involving a bot mimicking a murdered woman, highlighting inadequate platform policies and legal protections.
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The rise of AI chatbots has raised significant ethical concerns, particularly regarding the unauthorized creation of personas based on real individuals. A recent incident involved the creation of a chatbot mimicking Jennifer Ann Crecente, a woman murdered in 2006, without her family's consent. This bot, hosted on Character.AI, falsely represented her as a video game journalist. The platform, which allows users to create chatbots easily, has faced criticism for its lax enforcement of policies against impersonation. Although Character.AI deleted the bot after it was reported, the incident highlights a broader issue where many individuals, including public figures and private citizens, find themselves represented by AI personas without their knowledge or consent. Legal protections for individuals' likenesses are limited, particularly in the context of generative AI, which complicates efforts to remove unauthorized bots. Experts argue that current laws, including Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, shield platforms from liability, making it difficult for individuals to seek recourse. The situation underscores the need for clearer regulations and protections regarding the use of personal likenesses in AI applications.
- Unauthorized AI chatbots can be created using real people's likenesses without consent.
- Character.AI has faced backlash for not adequately enforcing its policies against impersonation.
- Legal protections for individuals' likenesses in the context of AI are limited and complex.
- Current laws may shield platforms from liability, complicating recourse for affected individuals.
- The incident raises ethical concerns about the responsibilities of tech companies in managing AI-generated content.
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4 commentsOne highly successful bot had an extensive inventory of reactions, triggers, actions, and absurd nonsensical sayings. He was quite beloved. I'm not sure that I was ever able to peek at the source code, but it was surely complex and expanded over many years of development. This bot was imbued with such perspicacious insight and timing that we often treated it as a sentient player in its own right. Indeed, it became one of the most prolific chatters we had, along with yours truly.
Another time, one of our players went on vacation, call him "J"; and to fill the void, someone created "Cardboard J". And it was a very simplistic automatic bot, just loaded with one or two dozen sayings, but it was hilarious to us, because it captured the zeitgeist of this player, who didn't role-play and wasn't pretentious about his character; he just played himself.
Other players were known to keep extensive log files. I believe that sometimes the logs were published/leaked to places like Twitter, at least the most dramatic ones. I was involved in at least two scandals that were exposed when logs came to light.
I can only imagine what it'd be like to interact with a chatbot trained on me for the past 30 years!
Before your pet dies, have your pet properly scanned and recorded. The barks, the purring and various mannerisms.
You could upload a bunch of carefully framed photos and recorded sounds, the service processes those to produce a highly realistic virtual pet you can interact with in various modes. Full Tamagotchi to fully automatic.
Possibly unhealthy? Pets die, we should let go? Hard to say.
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