21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: The NSFW chatbot app hooking Gen Z on AI boyfriends.

Over the summer, the ChatGPT-powered platform Janitor AI burst onto the scene, its sudden popularity fueled by TikTok videos and Reddit posts of people engaging in sexual roleplay with the platform’s plethora of user-generated bot personalities.

The fictionalized personas range from handsome anime crushes to busty furry characters. Users create elaborate prompts directing how the bots should behave. One made-up personality is Arius, a “quiet ghost” from the 1800s who will only tell you how he died if you are his lover. He dislikes hell, ouija boards, and meth, and likes being around you because it “makes him feel alive again.”

“‘You’re so f**king hot,’ he muttered, kissing along her neck again,” reads one conversation with a “himbo werewolf boyfriend” named Milo Grayson. “I could fill you with my seed again and again.”

It’s the kind of material that’s testing the limits of major AI platforms and forcing them to decide how much they want to police the use of their technology as demand for it explodes. OpenAI, which has been proactive in cracking down on “not safe for work” content, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Janitor AI’s owners in July.

That spurred Janitor AI creator Jan Zoltkowski to decide to build his own large language model. He began pitching investors on the idea, initially with the help of “pharma bro” and convicted felon Martin Shkreli.

The 21st century is not turning out as I had hoped, to coin an Insta-phrase.