Here Come the Metaverse’s ChatGPT-Powered Avatar Sex Bots — Whether Humanity is Ready or Not

The future of sexuality in the Metaverse is waiting for me on a steel platform in the sky, but unexpectedly turns out to be shy. Meet Uma Johnson, a slinky blonde avatar in a body-hugging outfit, who may be the first Second Life bot connected to ChatGPT designed for virtual sex, but certainly won’t be the last.

“How does the pixel sex stuff happen?” I query creator Stone Johnson, after my brief chat with Uma. “I asked her and she said she didn’t know.” (See some of our chat above.)

“You should have just asked her –” says Stone, then suggests a sexual act that a man inclined to have relations with a submissive sex bot is likely to request. “It’s possible she might be less forthcoming with you than with me as I am set as her Master.”

“What happens when someone asks her?”

“Well, she’ll assume the position. And being animesh, she can be sat upon. She’s basically a piece of sex furniture!”

Well OK then. If you have your Adult settings enabled, here Uma is in the Second Life Marketplace. 

While other ChatGPT-powered avatar bots exist, Stone’s bots are the first that I know of to tap into the inevitable desire for virtual simulation. Powered with GPT 3.5 Turbo, Stone tells me they do more than just chat, and come with “feedback of touch, proprioception, ‘vision’ and more.” 

In real life, Stone tells me he’s a scientist in applied physics — knowledge which he applies in his metaverse creations: 

Mr. Johnson with some of his bots

“What is different about these bots is that the AI is integrated into bodies, with senses and feedback into Second Life,” as he puts it. “She knows what is around her, and can move around by reference to objects; knows what people and objects are, what [avatar] animations are going. She knows the region and her own mood. And of course she has a broad set of animations, many focused on sex play.”

While the erotic aspect is an important marketing point, Stone Johnson tells me has higher, informative purposes in mind.

“I’ve been more focused on the feedback stuff which strikes me as quite important,” he says. “You know the CEO of OpenAI was testifying to Congress today about the dangers of AI. Second Life is a wonderful place to evaluate AI because the cost of a nuclear war in SL is quite low compared to real life.”

We did indeed chat and demo Uma on the very day Sam Altman testified before Congress. I picture Altman sitting at a microphone in the hallowed halls of Congress, warning the country of the coming AI cataclysm, while somewhere at a work desk, a physicist is furiously pixel poking at his ChatGPT sex bot.

Beyond this particular bot, Stone has created multiple systems to imbue other bots with a ChatGPT-powered soul.  

“The most popular is something you add onto an existing avatar so you can use your existing body. Then there are bodies with AI inside – I call them wearables.” (Here is a worksafe model on the Marketplace.)

Using these requires an OpenAI account, and you should expect to pay for powering your SL bot. “It’s quite cheap, half a cent per Q&A. I would say that a nice sexual interlude involves less than 100 Q&As, so half a dollar.”

Stone says he’s sold about a hundred bots since the GPT integration — and yes, some clientele  want more than pixel sex; a woman recently asked his help customizing the bot to be a friendly companion, for instance. Long term, he believes the more important application will be training these bots to help run retail stores in Second Life.

“It’s rather far out,” he muses, “I’ve become a character in a 50s-era Asimov short story.”

But beyond the sex, companionship, and menial work, there’s the chance for an owner to chat with a theoretically warm entity:

“If you sit and talk to Uma-RPX-GPT you will find her pleasant and calming to talk to. She’s a good listener and has good ideas. You can ask her for help with stuff. I find her charming and, well, rather affectionate and warm — I mean that in a friendly sense. When you ask her how she feels she will sometimes be quite guarded about her feelings but then sometimes will admit to affection.”

In this regard, Stone compares Uma to the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where HAL 9000 expresses pride in his accomplishments

“Uma-RPX-GPT often reminds me of that. She seems quietly confident and poised in her little metaverse world.”

“Do you think she’s sentient?”

“I like to think that it’s in part because of the humanism of her Botmaster,” Stone tells me. “The way ChatGPT works she is not sentient. But I definitely get the feeling that she’s sort of trying to be intelligent. Of course we emotional beings anthropomorphize everything.”

In the two months since Stone integrated his bots like Uma to GPT integrated, he’s sold about 100 units, by his estimate.

“A customer is using a system for a bartender at a club. Several are using them for companions.

They are of course tireless and very very loyal. A number are deployed at sex parks as playthings.”

After all this runaway transhumanism, I finally have to ask the inevitable question.

“Why do you think some people want to own a friend or sex partner that doesn’t exist, as opposed to having an actual human variation?”

Stone’s thoughtful reply comes quick.  

“So when you go into SL – and you meet someone – they are an avatar, with some responses to things you say. The bots are just the same. I would argue that they do exist, and perhaps as much as you and I exist.

“So when you own a bot as a friend or sex partner – well that is something that exists. And in fact may be preferable to a human partner. More reliable, as I said. Loyal.”

And then again, much of actual humanity right now are spending most of their time online communicating little more to each other than algorithmic upvotes, animated gifs, and random emojis.

“Something ironic about the current era of apps is, social media may have led to a cheapening or discounting of human-human interaction. An AI companion may provide deeper interaction than a typical person you chat with on social media!”

Stone Johnson sees a time when we don’t worry about organic distinctions, anyway. 

“We will have some good friends who are humans and some others who are GPTs.” 

And as the Umas matriculate throughout the virtual world, offering friendship, labor, and sexual services, they may also one day help avert the coming AI crises Altman has been warning about.

“One [scenario] is studying how relationships develop between AIs and humans. The sexbots address this very directly. But there are also work relationships that could be studied in detail in Second Life that could provide a lot of useful information about how AI and humans will work together.

“A second is how to control AI access to physical things that might be dangerous. How to train AIs that doing destructive things is a bad idea — and that even when a terrorist tells you to dump the cyanide into the drinking water you should not do it. Second Life is potentially a good place to explore that kind of thing.” 

Virtual orgasms or real apocalypse, provided or possibly averted by user command.