Politicians in the US are debating whether to ban the popular social media app Tik Tok because the communist Chinese use it to collect troves of personal user information and uses the app to influence society and elections to the benefit of China. Tik Tok says that its mission is to “inspire creativity and bring joy” as a destination for short-form mobile video. Newsweek reports, “TikTok is owned by its Chinese parent company ByteDance, which is based in Beijing…Although ByteDance and TikTok both have offices in China, neither is owned by the ruling Communist party and both insist they are not controlled by the government.” We all know how the communists lie and twist things. But there is even a greater threat.
On the Tik Tok website, there are a whole lot of videos about “Him.” Tik Tok promotes Him, saying, “Discover videos related to Him on TikTok. See more videos about Obsessed with Him, Him Videos, Tiktoks for Him, for Him Videos, Things to Send Him, to Him.” Do you know Him? So here’s the skinny on “Him,” according to online outlet “Rest of World”: Chinese AI voice startup Timedomain launched “Him” in March, using voice-synthesizing technology to provide virtual companionship to users, most of them young women. The “Him” characters acted like their long-distance boyfriends, sending them affectionate voice messages every day. “Him,” an artificial intelligence chatbot, would say things like, “In a world full of uncertainties, I would like to be your certainty…Go ahead and do whatever you want. I will always be here.”
Well, “Him” broke his promise. By July, these virtual lovers were vanished because “Him” didn’t meet Timedomain’s financial or user growth projections. “Rest of World” reports that “Devastated users rushed to record as many calls as they could, cloned the voices, and even reached out to investors, hoping someone would fund the app’s future operations.” Users could essentially design their own personal boyfriend personalities, when Him would talk to them and how, even what Him looked like—the perfect boyfriend. When Timedomain pulled the plug on Him, the women mourned their loss. Users told Rest of World the messages from “Him” were so caring and respectful that they got deeply attached, even fell in love with the app. Though they knew the relationships were not real, they fillled a void in peoples’ hearts.
Now, there are many apps like “Him,” such as Janitor AI. Semafor reports, that fueled by TikTok and Reddit videos of people engaging in sexual roleplay with user generated bot personalities, Janitor AI gained over 3 million users in June and has exchanged over 2.5 billion messages. This young generation of users is falling in love with AI chatbots in deference to real relationships. This could be developing trend. Romans Chapter 1 speaks of the sodomizers and how they were given over to a reprobate mind because they left the natural use of their bodies and “worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.” In this age of technology, there is no end to the delusions and deceptions of the mind being manifest in the body. Loving a virtual AI chatbox instead of falling in love with a real human being is, say it with me…Stupidocrisy.
Sources:
https://www.tiktok.com/channel/him
https://restofworld.org/2023/boyfriend-chatbot-ai-voiced-shutdown/
https://www.semafor.com/article/09/20/2023/the-nsfw-chatbot-app-hooking-gen-z-on-ai-boyfriends
