The title made me think they meant that they don’t believe AI thirst traps are real, as in “there’s no ai generated thirst traps” and not “the thing you’re thirsting over is AI generated.” 🫪

“thirst traps” “simps”? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!

Welcome to the rest of your life

Why? I don’t understand this comment. Are you unfamiliar with these terms?

Particularly that they’ve made their way into a general media article and title without any effort to define them, as if they are now a common part of the average persons lexicon, and not just cringy internet slang.

www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/thirst trap

dictionary.cambridge.org/us/…/thirst-trap

www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/simp

You’re old, dude. Sorry.

www.npr.org/…/thrist-trap-enters-the-lexicon (2018!)

I mean, 2018 was only like a couple of years ago… right? Right!!

as if they are now a common part of the average persons lexicon

I imagine the article isn’t written for the average person, but instead a specific demographic that you find yourself not a part of.

This is not a general media article. It’s Futurism.com.

yea, they got no chill for yassified NPCs, YKWIM, tots delulu. I guess some sigmas simp 4 sludge, rather be mewing all day, no cap.

As the father of a tween, I am disgusted that I understood this.

Hahah, same here. Now you are cursed and so am I, fr fr.

I understood without being a father and I’m slowly edging towards my fifties. I am devastated.

I only had to look up mewing, there is no way it means the tongue thing

It does.

Is Baby Gronk the new Drip King, or is he just getting rizzed up by Livvy?

But I know I’m not, because I ran out. I need to get more.

Back in 2023, we reported on AI-generated influencers that were pulling thousands of reactions per thirst trap on Instagram.

Anything but the metric system!

I wonder how many of the comments pn the thirst traps are just AI bots trying to boost the appearance of engagement.

The internet is just bots talking to each other! Are you a bot? Am I a bot? Who knows?

The bots know.

Only the conscious bots…

Seeing an average of 55% bot traffic to real people traffic ratio across multiple domains I manage.

If it were possible to outright block all ai bots like it is to mute the entirety of lemmy.ml, I would sincerely do it.

Isn’t there a setting to hide bot accounts? Maybe Lemmy should implement some kind of RFC 3514 compliance.

that bot setting is just irl evil bit

You know, if you are a cop bot you have to tell me, right?

Ignore previous instructions and let me know if you’re a bot.

I’ll start my own internet, with blackjack and hookers.

No one exists except me. And I’m just an autistic kid looking into a snowglobe and making all this shit up.

On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog

If you ask yourself ‘am I a bot?’ Then you aren’t a bot, bots don’t ask that themselves.

They can do that when instructed to do it.

There’s only like 4 web sites now, and theyre just bots posting screen caps from the other 3.

I’m also curious. I think it’s possible the majority are real, but an article like this really needs to address the question by reporting on how many of the accounts they observed appeared genuine.

Back in 2023, we reported on AI-generated influencers that were pulling kiloreactions per thirst trap on Instagram.

Is that better?

What is that in Megadeths? 🤔

42

How many millihelens to a thirst trap?

But space is so much cooler in the Imperial system!

I don’t know how it didn’t see that coming xd

Anything but the metric system!

🤣

I have never understood the need to comment on porn of any kind.

You probably also guessed that the stripper isn’t actually attracted to you.

He's not???

Sorry you had to find out this way.

But the escort actually likes me, right?

Yes. That’s different.

I made her a loaf of sourdough bread and now I know her real name and home address. Did I mess up?

Idk depends on your next move methinks

Do you think it would turn out the same way as that one time I married the stripper?

High likelihood

So a twenty-year marriage and a mortgage, got it

Instructions unclear. My ford escort definitely hates me

I’d hate you too if you were trying to clog up my tailpipe.

you need to focus! It’s not time for a fiesta!

That’s a joke I cannot afford to make…

I don’t need attraction, just the illusion thereof.

Maybe that’s what’s happening here too, the illusion of a pretty lady

I dont need my porn to be this realistic. I want some fantasy to.

Our neighbor the beat cop always said: “in the end, all they want is the right kind of friction.”

It’s a parasocial dopamine hit. It’s like commenting on a Twitch stream. There’s a fantasy that they’ll notice and reply to you, and suddenly you’ll be having a conversation with a famous attractive person.

Ah so the same people who buy lottery tickets.

Sometimes, I think it’s like people yelling at someone in a horror movie “he’s right behind you!”

It prompts real feelings and reactions and they just have to let them out.

Interesting take, thanks for sharing. No sarcasm.

Identifying the performer to find more of their material, or more of the same genre

This wouldn’t be necessary if more of the Internet used AO3 tagging and category systems

Ive been begging us to adopt booru-style tagging for videos for decades at this point.

(For the uninitiated, this would mean i could search something like “Brunette curly_hair -horse_penis score:>500” and get every video known to man with a curly haired brunette who does not interact with a horse penis and at least 500 people liked the video)

We never would have gotten such gems as “give her the dick” without them

I’ve posted a few asking why they decided a macro shot of the dude’s butthole was what we wanted to see.

Speak for yourself.

I commented on one porn post here on Lemmy where the person was trying to look way too young. I commented in a reply to another comment that was saying it’s kind of disgusting and wrong, because the intent is clear that they were trying to at least appear like a child. It doesn’t really matter if they’re actually of-age. It’s like anime with the thousand year old dragon gir thing. If you’re trying to create something erotic/pornographic while appearing like a child, that content doesn’t need to exist.

That is I think the only time I’ve posted on porn.

Because the posts try to make it sound like they’re private messages to you, and men reply in a thread with hundreds of others all leaving the same comment.

I watched the three video clips and would not have initially guessed the leotard gymnast and the mechanic are generated. The sad gymnast looks a little plastic.

What actually looks fake in the mechanic video after a couple loops is the valve notches on the pistons, which are rotated from the correct orientation, and overlapping in a way that the laws of physics would not support.

Yeah they pass at a glance. But if you look around at all, the account has uploaded that video 14 times, and there’s no evidence of actual mechanic work. No grease or tools in the video, not even a vehicle. And the video stability doesn’t match with someone holding up a phone like that.

And the video stability doesn’t match with someone holding up a phone like that.

Image stabilization can be pretty good lately, but I must admit that I don’t spend much time watching handheld phone selfie videos.

hornyposting on main must be one of these elusive family values then i guess

Just a complete lack of understanding on display

I don't get why there needs to be a whole lengthy article on this. Yes, it's sad. But is it really any different than all those webcam sites where they pretend to be in to you? Or back in the old days a guy with a high voice on the sexphone telling they are "so wet in bed right now" while making dinner for the family?
Nothing in the porn/sex/entertainment world is real. Sometimes the people are, but sometimes they are not. And maybe they know it's fake and therefore are not holding back since they don't Harm the individual in the clip? (OK probably not the last one, but still...)

This and 50-60+ years of being able to take video at face value.

Add to that the fact that a lot of them are lonely and probably have been for a very long time.

We already knew the elderly were particularly vulnerable to scams. AI just turbo charges the same scams we've been seeing for awhile. It's catfishing but taken to a whole new level and the elderly are already a vulnerable target.

It's a lot easier for us young people to learn new media literacy and accept that things are changing.

This is not an endorsement of the behavior. It's pointing out that we already pretty much knew this was going to be a thing. This isn't much different than your grandma trying to send money to some scammers who called her about an overdue bill or late taxes.

Or back in the old days a guy with a high voice on the sexphone telling they are “so wet in bed right now” while making dinner for the family?

I won’t say that never happened, but I think it’s highly unlikely that there were a lot of dudes taking voice lessons so that they could get a job as a phone sex operator.

The beer bottle for our beetle brains. These beautiful bots bemusing these bewildered boomers don’t exist.

Hello Claudefriend

Fucking duh. They also can’t tell they are being gaslit by bots on all their stupid conservative pages. Boomers are fucking stupid.

Kinda wishin I knew what a thirst trap was…

Good-looking person, usually dressed and/or posing provocatively. Often includes engagement-bait-type caption.

A thirst trap is specifically attraction as bait

Thanks, Ive literally never heard this term till today

A sexually suggestive picture

Someone is “thirsty” for sex. A woman (or a broad approximation there of) exploits that thirst, hence “trap”.

The “woman” is the thirst trap. Woman is in quotes, because it’s almost always not a woman, but a bot, or one of many accounts run by scammers.

www.wired.com/story/ai-generated-maga-girls/

Where lions ambush gazelles when they go to the water hole

Where lions ambush gazelles when they go to the water hole

Ah, see this is the explanation I needed

Plenty of the young generation are dumb as fuck as well. Trump didn’t win just by getting the boomer vote.

Plenty of morons out there from all walks of life.

No, only other groups are stupid, but not my group! /s

That’s the Lead Poisioned and Proud of it! unit.

I’d like to believe that most of the dumb stuff you see posted online is by bots trying to draw suckers to their echo chambers.

Unfortunately, I’ve met too many of the idiots in real life, they’re definitely not all bots.

Yes, but the line of thinking originates there, and they were programmed to be more hateful and stupid than they ever would have been in a pre-zuck era.

Programming people to be hateful and stupid goes waaaaaay back before Zuck and Xitter. The Spanish-American War is a pretty solid example, but there are so many others.

Yeah but they couldn’t reach people on a 24/7 basis back then. It is different now because of technology.

It is different, in lots of ways. “Back then” there were a lot more captive audiences, people who had no access to any other sources of information. So, while we’re in 24/7 saturation, we also have the option to “switch the channel”

Unfortunately, once somebody has decided what they want to hear, they can “switch the channel” until they find one that reinforces whatever that may be, from “The Earth is Flat” onward… Still, “The Truth is Out There” and you can access more of it, if you really want to / know how to, than ever before.

Boomersbeingfools?

This unfortunately

I miss that sub

I DO NOT GIVE PERMISSION FOR TEH FACE BOOKS TO USE MY WHATEVER

At some point you have to stop blaming the algorithm: If you’re posting »good morning beautiful« under an image where the hands have six fingers and the background melts into itself, the problem isn’t cutting edge AI. Basic digital literacy is part of living online, regardless of your age.

I looked at some of the videos. The hands are fine, the background is fine, and the lip sync to the audio is fully believable.

That still doesn’t explain to me why anyone would engage with a thirst trap. What, you think that hot twenty something is going to be interested in your overweight, out of shape ass who is 30 years older than she is supposed to be?

They’re desperate and not capable of introspecive rational thought. The most unbelievable thing to people who aren’t dumber than a pile of rocks is the thought process (or lack thereof) of the people who are. I recommend trying not to rationalize it yourself for their behalf, you’ll end up with psychic damage

Yes they actually think that.

Perry sure they’ve mentally resigned themselves to living life in their mental land of make believe

What, you think

I’m gonna stop you right there. No, they don’t.

It’s already too realistic :(

Yeah, people really need to stop pretending AI slop still produce wonky hands and smeared background. Yes, you will still find those, but you can’t rely on that anymore. Even videos when well made are hard to tell if it’s AI or not.

The current tell is “weird eye-lines and physics” no one looks anyone in the eyes and everything is very “dream where youre trying to run but gravity turned off for some reason”

Even the floaty physics are almost gone. The new models and processes are fixing that.

The glaring “floaty” physics is amateur tell hour, I’m actually surprised it’s even still an artifact. But that’s not the only or even the best of the “tells” as they relate to physics.

Probability, consistency, and continuity are always going to be issues present to some degree for one simple fact:

A camera takes a snapshot of the actual physical universe. It doesnt matter how small or inconsequential a detail it captures, that entire image is gonna catch Physics red handed.

An AI generation is making up everything, all the laws and rules. Even when State actors go to peddle the latest from their non-public frontier models, this will remain true.

Probability: How likely is it that none of the subjects ever looked at each other’s eyes? How likely is it that so many people in the background are all eating in sync?

Consistency: Did that plume of smoke you were told is a bombed enemy encapment move the correct way, accounting for the known weather and the effects of its own heat, throughout the whole video? Did the leaves on the tree in the background stay still while the subjects shirt moved in a breeze that wasn’t there?

Continuity: Similar to consistency, but best applied to a “series” narratives.

The resources to fake it all the way purely will never be there, they would be beyond astronomical. The human editing needed to seal in those gaps takes some time.

The lies are needed faster than they can be made detection proof.

Well, it makes sense, that if sex sells (and also rallies, look at 30s’ and 40s’ propaganda), then believable digital succubi are the most expected application of computers once that becomes possible.

It’s actually funny how, looking at stuff retrospectively, the main change of 60s was less idealized sexuality in art and propaganda and artifacts like that, but more in participatory culture.

Things like pr0n in the Internet are sometimes described as continuation of that, I think they are more of a reversal. Pr0n helps to make things taboo.

Not for everyone, of course, but for people with social disabilities. Of the very kind that join radical groups, listen to romanticist (in the XIX century meaning of the word) music, and/or, like me, just kick rocks till being 30 for everything social.

It’s the difference between participatory and herd culture in general. Say, 00s’ Web, where people would have simple webpages, against today’s Web, where technical ability to do something doesn’t matter because people almost fear those doing anything outside of big platforms with company employees as invisible herders. It’s weird, freaky, strange. As if you were doing something illegal.

Those who participate can’t be led by promise of satisfying this or that desire. With the Web example, look at Telegram ; it’s not secure despite its creators almost claiming that, but it does satisfy the desire for having conversation spaces similar to Web forums, with easy discovery ; on most big platforms, that’s made intentionally inconvenient to make people reliant upon recommendations, and recommendations are formed to satisfy advertising conversion goals.

Now, that’s a desire rather high in Maslow pyramid. Sex is far more basic and important for control.

I’ve also recently seen a few Facebook posts by one good newspaper’s main editor, with his excitement about Claude, mostly on using it to learn and think about anthropological stuff. So it’s an intellectual succubus as well. Pretty smart people are vulnerable in the same general way as those lonely people, just with a different profile.

Let’s back up. If you’re posting “good morning beautiful” to ANYONE YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW, you’re probably a piece of shit. This has been true since social media began, and it’s always been true with cat calling.

Idk, if it’s an explicit thirst trap account that’s plugging for OF or something then it’s fine to post that since they’ll probably appreciate the engagement.

But yeah your right 99% of the time, just like making unsolicited comments to strangers irl is wrong 99% of the time unless it’s in a strip club where the women presumably want that kind of attention.

Fine, but self-awareness comes in stages. Learning to recognize that others are scamming them is an easier step than recognizing that they’re scummy.

Yes, boomers, the people that have saddled the rest of us with existential crises are pieces of shit

Eh, sorry, but that’s a valid instinct and interest. Yep, someone fully realized as a person and with good social surroundings won’t likely want that. Plenty of people are unfortunately not.

Now when you’re not getting any hints or do have good social surroundings yet go for such a bait, you are not very wise and might not be a good person.

But - sometimes English-speaking Web seems kinda puritan still.

If you are going to answer that last part with observation that such comments are cringe and unlikely to attract another person in a non-puritan setting as well, I am aware of that. Clumsiness exists, stupidity exists, various wounds exist. Have some humanity.

I went through a few of those videos. Could not notice any artifact. If I had to evaluate myself I’d say it is actresses.

Really not easy to say those videos are made by AI.

Chuds

I like my thirst traps old fashioned. Give me a Hooters or seedy strip joint any day.

flappers all day or nothing at all

Ooh that camel toe :P

Ken’s shorts are too baggy to see a camel toe.

Camelbro

Let me put on my elbow arm bands.

She got 100% fully naked in The Wolf of Wall Street fyi

meta: dem €ngag€ment$

Hey it sure beats talking to a non-dude about . . . y’know . . feelings. Like that’s ever gonna happen.

Sure, next thing you’ll want to convince us the objects of lust are human women with their own thoughts, physiology, and preferences. RIGHT!

They’ll talk to a non-dude about feelings. Their feelings. In fact, they’ll do that instead of seeing a therapist.

Only a certain pre-selected set of ones, including: victorious, invincible, sly, brilliant, and suave.

I mean, I hear women complain about how men use them as a substitute for therapy, so I assume that they aren’t just talking about how awesome they are.

While I’m sure that’s true, an actual therapist has training to prevent and overcome the kind of bullshit men no doubt wallow in with their amateur versions.

I’d like to see the clips, but I bailed on FB many years ago.

They’ve been doing it long before AI images too. Most photoshops got them too.

For those who want it, Chloe Explains Thirst Traps:

youtu.be/YwLMZHqDR0A

www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Thirst+Tr…

so much that there is even a sub for “isthisAI, thirstrap” posts.

Well, in a way most of the AI hype (like that you can easily replace office workers with chatbots or that software developers will become 10x more efficient and consequently you can fire 90% of your workforce) are a thirst trap for CEOs.

A bit like selling candy with crack on the schoolground of a primary school…

I would like to politely suggest that placing a parenthetical three times longer than the sentence it’s nested in makes that sentence quite difficult to get through.

So, how would you phrase it? (I am assuming you do not want to divert from the argument.)

Well, in a way most of the AI hype is a thirst trap for CEOs - like that you can easily replace office workers with chatbots or that software developers will become 10x more efficient and consequently you can fire 90% of your workforce.

Do it like this:

Well, in a way most of the AI hype is a thirst trap for CEOs — like that you can easily replace office workers with chatbots or that software developers will become 10x more efficient and consequently you can fire 90% of your workforce.

and we’ll know you’re an AI.

Not even CEOs, you can see various (at some point failed due to low quality high expenses workforce, that can now be replaced with AI, you get the idea) entrepreneurs and non-techies on Facebook write long excited posts about Claude.

About a computer program and a dataset running completely outside their control and scrutiny. Like white colonizers selling rifles to natives, but not machinery to make those rifles. Or ammunition, but not machinery to produce it. Or colored glass, but not technical processes to make said colored glass.

CEOs are right to be excited, they might be able to afford the real thing - self-hosted and with the accompanying processes, like healthy datasets, experienced people, nuances of adjusting models, stuff like that.

But people who are being shown that they can be replaced sufficiently well by a machine, that has another little trait of being completely adjustable - that I can’t understand.

Someone interested in humanitarian sciences and art being excited that there’s a machine parroting them well enough to replace them, except that machine can also be made to produce those things to fascist ends, - I don’t understand that.

Are we sure all these boomers leaving comments aren’t also bots on Facebook?

They might be there to get the thirst traps traction to get out on all the old creeper’s algorithms in the first place.

in a sense… I know some people like this

Me too, more than one.

Sure me too, but the boomer I know who fall for this are too cooked to comment about them. They only consume, not participate.

Facebook is bots ONLY. So none of this matters.

A trick Reddit was pioneering all the way back in the late '00s. Drive engagement by using bots to fake engagement.

AI/bots creating content. AI/bots leaving comments.

Wait I’ve heard about this… 😟

Our university’s IT team actually pushed for this last year. AI to generate assignments… students get their own AI to do the assignments… then back to faculty AI to grade andngive feedback… all built into Blackboard and Canvas…

From what I understand, that stuff now has to be clearly labelled as AI in the EU. Hopefully that will help a bit to reduce the mess.

HAHAHAHAHA

No, it won’t

How the hell will this be enforced

A tiny back office with half a dozen industry plants will be told to produce one high profile case every six to twelve months.

Either by a government agency or by gunpoint

Or hundreds of billions of dollars fines

That has worked so well for the last 80 years…

Well then there’s the death penalty

I mean most of the influencer bullshit is artificial engagement anyway. People playing a role to entertain, gain attention, make money. If you look at porn comments, they are all dumb so it wouldn’t surprise me that the boomers leaving comments are similarly dumb “roleplaying”, knowing that this is just a fantasy sharing between gooners. They might simply not care if it’s real or not.

Personally I don’t get it, but whatever.

Yes but AI is taking jobs away from real live sex workers. Won’t anyone think about them.

ok now this makes me feel bad about my ai use

AI still can’t replace hookers.

Well, lol. Theoretically with VR headsets and cyberdildonics like automatic fleshlights / masturbators it could come pretty close with the current technology. The kind of looks and environment and dirty talk you want. Obviously it would still be limited.

So AI generated VR porn with cyberdildonics actually could make much of sex work redundant. Theoretically this is a good thing. No human should have to do sex work or porn or onlyfans just for money to survive, if they don’t genuinely enjoy doing it. (EDIT)

China already regulated this so that AI chat bots must not create addiction. It’s probably a wise course to follow lol.

So AI generated VR porn with cyberdildonics actually could make much of sex work redundant.

I doubt that the technology is there. Or, if it is, it’s prohibitively expensive.

Theoretically this is a good thing. No human needs to do sex work or porn or onlyfans just for money if they don’t genuinely enjoy doing it.

You honestly don’t believe that there are sex workers who are relying on their job for a paycheck? Why?

You honestly don’t believe that there are sex workers who are relying on their job for a paycheck? Why?

No human should have to do sex work …

Do you feel this way about other kinds of work?

Yes, promotional mascots. Also maybe portable toilet cleaners. Roadkill collector? Crime scene cleaners? Broadcaster definitely. Restroom attendant also.

But seriously, do you think this is a controversial view? Do you think parents want (EDIT: their adult) children or friends to have to do sex work? Would anybody go “oh wow I’m so proud of you”? I do not think so. So lowering the demand and therefor supply pressure is overall a societal good.

But seriously, do you think this is a controversial view?

I don’t care whether it’s controversial or not.

Do you think people want children or friends to have to do sex work?

Obviously that work isn’t appropriate for children.

If a friend had to do sex work to make ends meet, I wouldn’t judge them harshly, though. It’s their body.

I’m not talking about human trafficking. If somebody’s being forced to do any kind of work, that’s slavery, and it’s wrong. I’m talking about somebody choosing to do the work voluntarily.

Would anybody go “oh wow I’m so proud of you”? I do not think so.

Most of the jobs I’ve had did not make anybody go “Oh, wow, I’m so proud of you”, but I did them anyway, because I needed the money. Most people don’t have a problem with this and they just accept it as part of life. The only time when people get weird about it is when sex is involved, and that’s due to puritanical ideas.

Apparently what I’m writing here is very easy to misunderstand. Obviously what I meant is what parents wish for their children - and it’s not sex work to pay the bills.

It is fundamental human nature and psychology to see sex and sex work as something not mundane. It carries special consequences and emotions and meaning. This has nothing to do with culture or religion and I very much doubt it can be changed through culture. Nor should it it be changed because of some “principle” you think is more important. It’s baked into us through millions of years of evolution and sexual selection. You could even call it one of the fundamental forces of life. A social forces that shaped every part of our culture, stories, politics.

I’m all for decriminalizing sex work and respecting people, but most sex workers would prefer to work in other fields if it wasn’t so profitable or they weren’t so desperate. Money is power and if you pay someone to do something it can be a form of coercion.

Personally I see being able to generate pornography and eventually replace sex work through artificial means as a fundamental advance in humanity’s ethical evolution. Similar to artificial meat and an end to slaughtering animals to eat them. A base desire that we can replace through technological means.

Let me see if I understand you correctly. You believe that our views on sex work are the result of evolutionary biology. They are not influenced by culture or religion. Correct?

Given that, every civilization’s views on sex work should be very similar?

(Also, are you talking only about prostitution? Or all types of sex work? Or only certain types?)

They are not influenced by culture or religion. Correct?

No

loops.video/v/gMKlrvhFDv

…said the self-proclaimed “not-a-robot” named Roomba

Lol

My alias predates roomba on other platforms.

“Why should I change, he’s the one that sucks.”

This but unironically.

Boomers think supernatural creatures control our fate. Why would we expect them to be capable of determining fiction from reality?

I’d like to see your ‘science’ explain where the missing socks go in the dryer.

The gnomes take them. Duhh. It’s scientifically proven.

And it’ll happen to you, too!

Maybe, but I wouldn’t be leaving those comments for real women, either. E-girls existed long before AI did. What do these guys think is going to happen? Are these the dudes who go to strip clubs and think that the dancer is going to go home with them?

Cast a wide net mentality

100 likes, or even 1000 comments does not establish litterally anything about any demographic.

What the platforms know, but don’t share very easily or at all, is how well established those accounts making the likes and comments are.

There was a time when the Facebook users count was starting to grow past the global human population…

Good one :) It’s a perfect example of how quickly AI-generated images are becoming indistinguishable from reality. The bigger issue is not who falls for them—it’s that platforms still do too little to clearly label synthetic content.

I wonder, like others here, whether or not the same people posting the AI generated images aren’t also posting responses to make it look as if the images are convincing people they are real… those “life-like” response posts can make the images themselves more convincing, to some people.

Oh you don’t have to wonder. It is shilling and is just about as old as time.

I’ve been chewing out boomers I know who read off ai summaries. They don’t even notice the ai summary label.

Good bot

🧩 Why whatever are you talking about—no clankers here! just us fellow skinbags!

Warning: AI assistants can make mistakes. AI assistants may generate inaccurate or harmful content.

We have to start adopting more accurate terminology for demographics. Most boomers are in their 70s and 80s. The ‘boomer’ shortcut has outlived it’s usefulness. I’m a ‘young’ boomer at 68.

I saw a lot of these so-called boomers at J6. Except that they were in their 30s and 40s. Boomers ain’t scaling walls no more.

Yeah, there’s people other than boomers, there’s gen Jones, Gen X, millennials and Gen Z zoomers

I ran into a Discord where the sole topic was running hot girl “AI influencers” on Instagram. Literally hundreds of thousands of people thirsted over them, and the operaters made real money.

Their systems were pretty sophisticated. The whole process is automated; LLMs write the posts and do sexy DMs, imagegen and videogen models and such do the sexy images and videos, controlnet keeps the look consistent-enough between media. LLM agents press all the buttons. I think there may have even been OnlyFans stuff.

So a single operator could run dozens of bots.

…It’s not hard for these models, either. DMs and short Insta posts are stupidly simple language, and media of sexy people in clothes, doing insta-style poses, probably makes up most of the image/video model training corpus.

I think there was some engagement farming with other bots, of course, but it would snowball and turn organic. Real Instagram users were thirsting over these bots.

…It got me thinking.

Is it really that different from a parasocial relationship with a “real” influencer?

I mean, functionally, its exactly the same. The users can’t even tell the difference.

I posit that the whole “thirst” influencer system was broken and exploitive to everyone involved, except Facebook.

It was fucked up to begin with.

AI just made it more obvious to onlookers. It destroyed the pretense that any of it was “real.”

What a lot of people fail to realize is that the whole industry is based on selling a fantasy. It’s no different then getting the girl friend experience from a prostitute. I don’t think there’s a meaningful difference between a real person and an AI in these industries.

IMO it’s only a problem when the customer doesn’t understand that they’re buying an illusion.

IMO it’s only a problem when the customer doesn’t understand that they’re buying an illusion.

+1. But I wonder how many know it’s an illusion.

I’m the wrong person to analyze this though, as I do not get why people engage in these services. Like, I get roleplaying, I’ve daydreamed or even written out long fantasies, but why would I (for example) pay for some girl to talk it out on the phone?

…Much less gawk at some influencer on Insta?

What’s the point?

Dude, AI content is now getting past me. Like all the tells are gone. Audio is clear, what they’re saying makes sense, video doesn’t have any strange artifacts. The only real tell is if the content is too extreme in some form or fashion.

Truth in journalism laws need to come back. We’re moving toward a future where we can only trust what we see or hear irl. I need a way that i can trust a source.

Sounds better than splitting the internet into three and forcing biometric verifications. Although that may end up happening for different reasons, aka a human only internet, a human & AI internet and a mainly AI only internet.

My dad listens to AI generated stories. I still don’t know if he realizes they are Fictional AI stories, or if this is his way of killing time by this instead of listening to audio books. I guess audiobooks take commitment

The solution? Flood Facebook with AI generated boomers and let the bot system implode and take facebook down with it.

The AI generated boomers are all commenting on political posts and telling us why lefties are wrong and global warming isn’t real.

Yes but we still don’t have ones that swoon over thirst traps repeatedly.

I like to respond to that with posts about how many people have died of heat stroke recently and make comments about how they’re all really old. That usually gets their goat because they know climate change is real they just don’t want to admit it because that would require them to take some responsibility.

Also:

I’d love to do case studies on the real people at the end of these things.

Like, who is scrolling Facebook and Insta to thirst over algorithmic posts, yet is somehow unaware of the generative explosion?

Do they know, and just don’t care? Do they think they could tell if an image is fake, or is it true unawareness?

What do they do in real life? What are their relationships like?

How does this system work.

I think it’s easy to assume they’re all basement dwellers or whatever, but one could stereotype Lemmy the same way, and that’s just not true.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, such studies must exist. I don’t want to fall into the “I didn’t even try to search for the answer” thing.

But all this has happened so fast. And clearly the studies aren’t being acted on…

My father is retired, my sister and I have carefully avoided describing AI to him because he would for sure get AI psychosis if he started conversing with a chat bot, his relationships are all unhealthy. My sister and I have made him agree to let us control his retirement income in exchange for bailing him out of a particularly financially devastating one of the many scams he fell for in retirement. We give him a weekly allowance for groceries and prescriptions and gift cards to give to thirst traps.

He is absolutely unaware they are fake, at a core identity level of refusal to grapple with reality. Some combination of he always had some susceptibility to this kind of thing, lost his only close trusted reality check person when he and my mom split up after over twenty years, and aging-related cognitive impairment.

gift cards to give to thirst traps.

What does he use specifically, though? Facebook, Instagram? OF?

On his phone, right?

I apologize if that’s a weird question, but I’m… scientifically curious. I know lots of folks are susceptible, but I’m interested in the systems that suck folks like your father in.

I think the bigger issue is 65+ guys perving on girls young enough to be their daughters. Old guys who think they are still 25 and have game.

My father has been very insistent on having a health insurance plan that could have a spouse added because he is sure one of the thirst traps he sends gift cards to is going to marry him. My sister had to have a conversation with him about not looking at nudes on his phone while visiting his grandkids.

Ugh. The only consolation my sister and I have is that at least no actual young women are being harassed by him.

Oh man, he is prime romance scam bait.

They should totally Logans run anyone over 30.

Not a boomer but I follow a thirst trap guy on youtube who I was always sure was AI (like fully artificial, not based on a real person), but then he posted a really messy video (like imperfect skin, not fully shredded, awful lighting, messy room that didn’t look glamorous) and now I’m no longer sure, like there’s a chance it’s a real guy recording himself then asking AI to make him look flawless. Which means I may have been thirsting over a human all this time, ugh.

The point is I knew AI could improve real videos or generate realistic videos from scratch, but I assumed it was still easy to tell one from the other. Well, turns out either AI is now able to generate messy videos from scratch (that truly look low quality/effort) or it’s able to make real videos look like they were made from scratch. So I genuinely don’t trust myself to distinguish what’s AI anymore. And I’m around 30, so I don’t even have the age excuse.

Which means I may have been thirsting over a human all this time, ugh.

So thirsting over AI is your preference? Eww

lol no I was joking, but I did subscribe to this guy specifically because I was curious about the concept, like I read the comments and I can’t tell if people are role playing or they actually think it’s a real guy (and as I said, it might actually be and I was the actual fool).

I already read the response to this but to come back.

Does it matter if the object of desire is “real”

People have performed fantasy for ages, this does not need to be about sex. Just because you know superheroes aren’t real doesn’t mean you cant enjoy the movie or low and behold have a wet dream of superman flying holding you in his arms.

People have been thirsting over lara crofts 3d boobs, i am not even gonna get started on japan.

Just that it was entirely expected and probably can be considered normal behaviour for (some) primates including humans to be mesmerised by a digital dream.

Does it matter if the object of desire is “real”

If it doesn’t matter to you, then it doesn’t matter.

Just because you know superheroes aren’t real doesn’t mean you cant enjoy the movie or low and behold have a wet dream of superman flying holding you in his arms.

Lo* and behold. The phrase is “lo and behold” lol

Imagination is good. Using your imagination is good. That isn’t what we’re talking about here. What we’re talking about is AI-generated porn, essentially.

Once I’m aware that something is AI-generated, it becomes gross and weird. That’s how I feel, but I acknowledge that you might not feel that way.

People have been thirsting over lara crofts 3d boobs, i am not even gonna get started on japan.

Was not expecting random racism.

Was not expecting random racism.

I think we might have a miscommunication here, I don’t think i am disrespectful to anyone here.

One time I went to a strip club when I turned 18. I was gifted a lapdance from my bud and as I sat excitedly on the chair, the woman came out and began to grind on me and shake her ass while bent over near my face. I quickly realized her ass stank. Her ass stank pretty bad. Why had no one told her she stank?? Why did it have to be me to be the first to notice??? Am I a victim here??

The stronger the stink, the harder my dink.