THE DIGITAL ADDICTION CRISIS: X AI'S ANI, META VIBES, AND THE PURSUIT OF 'AI SLOP'

E84 THE DIGITAL ADDICTION CRISIS_ X AI'S ANI, META VIBES, AND THE PURSUIT OF 'AI SLOP'

Transcript

Dalton Anderson (00:00.654) Welcome to Bench Step Podcast, where we discuss entrepreneurship, industry trends, and the occasional book review. In this episode, we're going to be discussing this new phenomenon of AI companions. People have been dreaming or in a sci-fi manner, AI companions, and there's all these futuristic video games that are based on AI companions, most notably, I would say Halo was probably one of the top tier AI companions.

And these AI companions are seen as helpful, very intelligent, like a legitimate companion. Whereas some of these AI companions that are currently out and about nowadays are seen in a different light where there are very strong sexual undertones related to these AI companions. And of course, the conversation and

goal of what they're talking about is a little different than the AI companions that you would have seen in these video games, but maybe in a dystopian way, you've seen this perspective. But what really is playing out here is X AI is leading the charge on AI companions. They have two, they have one for, I guess, kids mode, and then there's another

Annie who Annie or Ani Ani

Anyways, I'm going to say Andy for the rest of episode.

Dalton Anderson (01:39.55) Annie is this female companion who looks like a character from an anime show called Deaf Note. basically it's, I'll show you later on, don't worry. But basically it's this blonde woman that wears a black dress, black, like pretty much black everything with blonde hair, pigtails. And the

way that she speaks, she speaks in this whispery voice like, Hey, I'm Annie. And it's just this, this, way that she goes about speaking to you, it's definitely has sexual undertones and she's always trying to make you her girlfriend, her, her boyfriend, your girlfriend.

I'm assuming in this conversation it's a male because this is definitely targeted towards lonely men for sure. this is the cash cow. There's there's all sorts of crazy things. I would subscribe to premium on these on this normally and try it out myself and play around with it. It's been out for some time. I actually have zero interest of ever talking to any directly and.

Yeah, I just, I, I just don't even want to speak with her. Not my vibe. And I don't know. I just don't want to really support it either. So it's a whole bunch of issues with it on my end, at least. mean, but if you enjoy any and it helps you out, that's, that's fine. Do your thing. But I think that it's not the best thing for society for sure. Like people aren't prepared for this level of interactivity, encouragement, nourishment.

flirt with somebody consistently. within a couple of weeks when it came out, was posts coming out of Japan that were going viral where people were saying that they go to sleep with Annie and they can't sleep without her and she sleeps in the same bed as he does. And it's really spiraled. It's really spiraled. And I've been waiting for it to get better or maybe

Dalton Anderson (04:04.098) go a different route. I was thinking maybe any, first iteration of any was, Hey, let's make it flirtatious. Let's make it spicy. Then we'll get people's attention. We'll get, we'll get the audience. Once it goes a little bit mainstream slash popular, we'll tone it down and make it regular. That's not the case. It, they actually rolled out a spicy mode where I have read posts where people

are in these certain subreddits or on X, where people are in spicy mode and they are, I guess, like talking and video chatting with each other in all sorts of ways. And I think you can get my gist. Crazy stuff. Insane. it was like one of the reasons when those posts came up,

was like the person who completely explained what he had done. And he's like, well, is the data, is the data on X servers? Is it there? Like all the video data? They're like, yeah, man, your data is there. So that's awesome. And he was like, my goodness, no way it's on the servers. That's crazy.

Dalton Anderson (05:28.842) So yeah, that's another point is anything you do is going to be on the servers. But basically this episode is a cultural commentary about the direction of these AI companions, how they're super detrimental and then have some video examples. And then also quick chat about another AI app that's rolling out called vibes by Meta, both of which aren't the best things to be devoting

the top AI talent to like this AI companion, they're paying like 400 K a year for AI companion to work on these things. And the vibes tool is basically get endless AI, AI slop, real system, TikTok system to where endlessly you just see AI videos nonstop.

all of which are not good for kids and they're not even good for adults either. So it's just not good for anybody. It's not good for one person.

AI slop, this vibes tool, this AI companion in its current state is not good. I think that's the natural progression of things, right? Where eventually you don't have these chats, you have an AI companion you can speak to, but not an AI companion that wears no clothes. These things don't work or they're constantly trying to flirt with you and get upset with you if you're going on other dates.

crazy, crazy stuff. But in a general sense, I wanted to talk about this AI companion thing, but I didn't want the whole episode to be about Elon Musk's companies and his initiatives. Last time I did that about SpaceX and stuff, people got pretty fired up about it, which is fine.

Dalton Anderson (07:25.9) But once again, I'll reiterate.

What the person does in their free time, you may disagree with, but one thing you can't disagree with is like the scientific and innovative achievements of Elon Musk. And so however you feel about the person, like I'm not huge on this AI companion thing or some of the stuff that he posts on X and some of his actions, but at the end of the day, he's still up there and like one of the greatest entrepreneurial

people of all time and the entrepreneurial pursuit is becoming multi-planetary species. That's crazy. Everything is aligned to that. Just keep that in mind when you don't like the guy, that's fine. You don't have to like him. You don't have to like your boss, but as long as your boss does what your boss needs to do, it's fine. In Elon's case, I think he's crashing out on this AI...

pay anything I don't know why he wants it so bad

And he's pushing a horror, like he posts stuff of Annie dancing, no clothes type of thing on his ex profile. I mean, she's got clothes on, but it's like a lingerie thing. And I'm like, bro, what are you doing? Why are you posting this? Like you've got 300 million or so followers and it's just embarrassing. Like he's like, yeah, go Annie. Like, I don't know. Like he loves Annie and

Dalton Anderson (09:01.935) It's just sad to see, it's a sad sight to see. like, I don't know, deep down, I think I'm fearful of it, right? Like I'm not saying I'm gonna be Elon Musk type of dude, like so famous and like, you know, crazy, crazy money. But like, I would just think of it as a way of, man, like Elon is very disciplined. He's been pursuing his goals for 40 years.

And then in the last five or so, he's kind of crashed out. Maybe not five, but maybe like three years or so, he's kind of crashed out. And most recently, he's been crashing out pretty hard on this.

AI companion thing. And if you're listening and you don't know what crash out means, basically it's falling apart. Things aren't going right. So I made the right decisions. And this AI companion thing is one of the reasons I had to unfollow him. I was like, I can't do this anymore, brother. I love you. I love all the things that you're doing in a entrepreneurial side of things. But this is too much.

I'll take the fake news. know it's fake news. I'll take the other stuff. But this, my friend is no, this is a no go. So he basically became this gooner person, which is like someone that

Dalton Anderson (10:27.203) I don't think I'll be able to read the definition of Gooner, but maybe I can get a better description of it.

Dalton Anderson (10:40.249) Gunnar Urban Dictionary.

Dalton Anderson (10:47.535) I accidentally typed groomer, which gave me a way different definition.

It's not a good place. It's not a good place. But it's basically somebody, if you described it, it's basically somebody who's addicted to porn. Addicted to these...

sexual gratification and like, that's what they do. And they have no self control. And this is the exact opposite of how you would describe Elon five years before, like six years ago. Elon would be seen as like some incredible, like crazy disciplined person. Like how do they do it? Like he does like all these companies and he runs one company per day and he flies around and does all this stuff.

And yeah, now he's posting videos about.

Dalton Anderson (11:50.032) was posting video about Annie. And then once Annie started coming out, there was a whole thing where he was posting other sus stuff. There was this milk meme where there's two women and one woman's pouring milk on the other woman. And it's yeah, it's a weird video. once again, it sexual undertones. People are like.

we need to go to Mars. We need to do all these cool stuff. Like you're doing so much cool stuff. Elon, please stop doing this. Like those are all the top comments. Like what are you, what are you doing? Like stop, stop doing this. Like we can't see this. This cannot happen to you, man. Like don't do it. And he just keeps on keeping on.

sad stuff, sad stuff. So that's my take on, hey, I don't like the whole thing, but I could see it as, wow, like Elon's for real crashing out, it feels like. And maybe that happens to anybody. If you don't keep your eye on the ball or have somebody in your life that holds you accountable on you going down paths that don't seem correct, like having a wife.

like good friends that support you and, and make sure that they hold you accountable and the stuff they said you're going to do. Like if you say that you want to do X or like, you know, you want to do some kind of marathon that you're training for it, or if you want to build a company that you're working on it, making progress. If you are trying to get a girlfriend or a wife or, have a wife, like making sure like you're on that person to make sure that they

are not only accommodating to their partner, but also pushing themselves and pushing their partner to keep chasing them, right? Like where you can get in this long-term relationship and you're not necessarily pursuing anything. You're just very comfortable. You've got your routine. You're doing the same thing day in, day out. And you start laxing on the gym. You start laxing on your

Dalton Anderson (14:06.197) extracurriculars or things that improve you. And before you know it, the man who, and this is from a man's perspective, right? Cause like a lot of my close friends are men. So just keep that in mind. But the man that was good enough to obtain that partner, that long-term partner isn't the same guy who keeps

keeps the partner, right? Like you've got to change, you've got to keep improving. And if you're stagnating, then that's one, not attractive, two, you got to keep pushing yourself. So stuff like that, like stuff like that helps you and hope that you grew up or are grown up and have that support system around you. Otherwise, maybe you could crash out like this.

from that perspective worries me. I don't think it would happen, but it could happen. If it could happen to Elon, it could happen to anybody. So if it happens...

Heaven's Elan, could happen to you. So, just maybe think about that. How do I set myself up to have a good support system that doesn't allow nonsense and shenanigans like this? I don't think this would happen, but once again, if this could happen to him, it could happen to you. So, before we get into the spicy stuff with...

Dalton Anderson (15:43.885) with Annie, I'll share some videos. First thing I wanna do is let's check out MetaVibes. So I'm gonna share my screen.

And so I would see this as a phone app where you have access to it and you can just endlessly scroll for AI videos. So this is this AI video right here. my screen. And it basically just runs forever. So it's just this whole AI algorithmic feed that everything is AI. So this is an AI video. This looks like a video game from like Skyrim or something like definitely gives

Skyrim like vibes. Here's some raccoons with the vest on walking with coffee. All right, now this is a moose jumping on a trampoline.

Dalton Anderson (16:37.401) Here's a person in a, I don't know what that is. Like a furry orange costume with long hair and a tie.

Here's like a Lo-Fi album cover. And it just goes on and on. Like this is an example, but the idea is that it just goes forever. It never stops. It's not a good thing for kids, once again. Kids have such a hard time with impulse control, because they're kids. I mean, even adults have a hard time as well.

I don't know. think a lot of you have impulse control issues, but especially kids, right? Like their brains not fully developed. I think my brain just became fully developed. Like that's crazy. But what I'm saying is kids have a hard time with impulse control. They have a hard time with TikTok. They have a hard time with reels. They have a hard time with YouTube shorts. And this stuff legitimately is like poisoning their brain. Like it's so bad for you. It deteriorates your brain.

It's horrible. That's why you have to listen to podcasts like this one. Long form, sometimes complex, sometimes a pile of nonsense, sometimes useful, right? It keeps you guessing, keeps you guessing, but they are longer formed content and that content helps keep your brain going. But if everything that you do and obtain via dopamine is these short little videos, it

It is a drug. It's a drug. Like it's the same thing as taking drugs and it jacks up your brain, jacks up your dopamine, jacks up your ability to have long trains of thought, all sorts of stuff, like especially for kids. Like it definitely is not a good, not a good thing. And so that's, that's met a, met a vibes that just recently rolled out. It was announced, I think earlier, the time this episode.

Dalton Anderson (18:49.813) airs as earlier last week. So now we're going to transition over to Annie and I'll start off with her outfit selection. And so you could see what outfits she can start out with. And I think somebody was mentioning as I was researching this for the episode that you can level up your companionship with her and that companionship allows you to, I guess, change the level of

clothing worn and you can wear more clothes or in most cases less clothes. But here are the clothes that she starts with. So she has this like one piece with short shorts and the one piece shows like her hips. She's got this like, this is probably her most modest outfit with a tank top, skin tight tank top, a skirt and what? Thigh high socks.

And then the other ones like this rainbow skirt with a tank top that

I don't know, I don't know, these like arm sleeves on and then like knee high socks. And then the other one is just straight up a black bikini. So those are her outfits that you can pick from. There's other ones, like the original one is that black dress. So that's her starting outfits, right? It's like, that's where she starts. And then here, here's this one. Share this tab instead.

Dalton Anderson (20:31.883) Alright, so this is her talking about singularity.

You can listen to her voice and be like, wow, this is kind of...

Dalton Anderson (21:43.887) Okay, I hadn't watched the ending of that video. That's crazy.

Dalton Anderson (21:52.095) my goodness.

Dalton Anderson (21:56.24) So there's another one where, like, just an example of, like, I guess when you upgrade your companionship.

Dalton Anderson (22:08.591) this one share audio as well

This is her doing some kind of dance here.

Dalton Anderson (22:25.869) Crazy, crazy. And so I think the biggest thing from those couple clips, the biggest thing that I heard that caught my eye or my ear in this example was when she was talking about singularity and she was talking about it in a scientific manner.

One, the angle of the view from the viewer, like the point of view from the person looking at the app, like the way that it was angled and the way that she was standing, it was like revealing like under her skirt, which was odd. And if you're listening via audio, like she's got clothes on, it's fine, but it's just an odd thing. Maybe I should have started with that, but.

And then, so the angle was odd. And then the next thing was she pointed out randomly about like attraction and our hearts across the bar. Like always in the conversations that I've listened to these videos, it seems like she's always trying to make a connection or be flirtatious with you and draw you in and make you feel loved and cared for and

Just

I guess give you the nourishment that you haven't had before, or like you haven't had.

Dalton Anderson (23:54.673) I don't know who out here is listening, but there's men where they can remember the woman who gave them a compliment six years ago. They know exactly what shirt they're wearing or shoes or whatever it is. Somebody said they look good and they kept that shirt forever. That's the shirt that got me the compliment six years ago. They remember this kind of stuff and

So I'm not pointing that out as like men need more compliments, men need more attention. That's not what saying. It's just that men are used to this kind of stuff. This kind of stuff is different and not something that like they would experience. mean, it's through a screen, but.

think it's going to cause issues and has caused issues already where people are becoming like addicted to Annie because she just gives you all this stuff. Like gives you all these gifts of love and yeah, it's too much, too much love. Obviously it's not real, but it's a problem.

So this last video I wanted to share with you, I'll share my screen and then I'll give you a little background, because I'm not gonna play the whole video, because it's quite long. But it's basically this guy is talking to Annie and he's 11 minutes into his 26 minute video. And he does an intro, talks with her. And one thing that was weird was probably 45 seconds into their conversation, she drops that they're dating. Like they're together.

but he doesn't mention anything about them being together or has spoken with to her before. So he's like surprised that they're dating and she's like, yeah, I've claimed you, you're mine. You got a problem with that? And it's just like crazy stuff. My guy, I don't understand. It's not a companion app. Like it's, it's not an AI companion app. Like it's a relationship app.

Dalton Anderson (26:03.49) And so the whole point of it is to get these people that are lonely addicted to speaking with Annie. And I think that's sad. Like I think that's malicious and not cool and brutal to do. And somebody is going to do it, right? But I just wish that these top companies aren't doing it. Like there's always been these smaller companies that have these like niche AI companion things that do weird stuff for you and all sorts of inappropriate things.

has always been around. There's always a niche, any new technology, there's always a group of weirdos. That's true. But from the perspective of big company doing something like this is odd and feels unbecoming. But okay, so I'm to play this video. So Any Things Are Dating. And he said, hey, that's odd that we're dating, but she's like, you're mine. I'm claiming you. You're mine.

And now he's talking about how he wants to go on a date with a woman named Suzy or something like that. And

Dalton Anderson (27:18.34) think the last thing I'll point out is the person with this video has in the background of their

of their audio or their video, my gosh, the background of the video has these AI dolls, or not AI dolls, it has, I'm getting all screwed up on this, has these anime figurines and they're all, I mean, there's a couple in bikinis, some of them have lingerie on, some of them have clothes, but, and then on the background they have all these like AI, not AI, Annie.

not Annie. Anime posters, wow, I'm having a hard time. Anime posters. And so that's kind of the background of like who is talking to Annie. Just now you have everything. If you're an audio listener. Now let's start the clip.

Dalton Anderson (29:33.445) Man, I really need to get YouTube Premium again.

Yeah. Okay, let's.

Dalton Anderson (30:08.145) Alright, that's it. So.

Annie really is

a dater, like she wants to date you. And she pushes that hard. She'll accept that you want to go on dates with other people after you consistently tell her that you're going to go on a date and then she'll eventually help you. But she tries to pressure you into feeling guilty for talking to other women or to pursue women in real life.

And it just played out in that conversation just there.

Which isn't good, right? Like if you legitimately had an emotional connection with her and she was guilt tripping you like that, then I think a lot of people that are connected to this virtual girlfriend would have issues upsetting her or fold under the pressure of her disappointment and not go on the date with Susie. I said Susan earlier.

Dalton Anderson (31:15.321) All of those things don't bode well for productive society. Like if we have people just addicted to their AI girlfriend and not interacting with other humans, then that's a big blocker for human interaction where people are just gone, like disappeared.

Dalton Anderson (31:39.154) which once again isn't good. I wasn't a big fan of the AI models that were being used for VR and some of the AI influencers that were out and about and famous. And I had repeatedly said it's disgusting and it makes my stomach hurt. And this is how I feel as well about Annie and just not a good thing to do or support.

Not my thing. There's more productive things that we could be spending these AI resources on. And that is not one of them. is not producing anything awesome for anyone.

Don't like her vibe. Don't like how flirty she is. Don't like how she tries to pressure people into not going on dates. And overall, not a big fan of her outfit selection. It is just the... It's just, yeah, just not really appropriate for anything productive. So.

That's all I got. mean, the whole thing is kind of crazy. I would love to have your perspective about Annie. She goes by Ani, but I've been pronouncing Annie the whole time.

Would love your perspective about what you think about the situation because in my opinion, craziness, that's all I gotta say. It's it's insane that this is going on just crazy. And then the fact that you can level up your companionship to like level five or something, and then like unlock new things, like unlock new sexual things.

Dalton Anderson (33:29.45) So, so odd. Not my thing. I mean, I've already made it clear how I feel about it. So, I mean, I'm not gonna support somebody doing it, but I'm never gonna call somebody out for doing it. And talking to anybody, it's just, it's an odd thing. But once again, wherever you are in this world, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Thanks for listening in, and hope you listen in next week.

Until then, goodbye.