Artificial intelligence is everywhere these days, with technologies like ChatGPT and DALL-E tapping into human artistic creativity and expression. Sometimes it gives interesting absurd results, like e.g generated by AI Seinfeld– as a show Nothing, Forever. Other times it simulates humanity, like the AI-controlled VTuber Neuro-sama, which recently began reacting to content in front of tens of thousands of Twitch chats — and according to its creator, it has plans to work with “human streamers” in the future. -weird on the internet.
Neuro-sama may look like a typical VTuber, but the popular livestreamer is actually powered by artificial intelligence. When pressed for details via Twitter DM about how Neuro-sama learns and communicates, her creator Vedal simply said that “she uses a combination of state-of-the-art AI models and algorithms. Its chat AI, for example, is powered by large language patterns.” And according to their Twitch channel, VTuber “primarily” uses the C# programming language. AI has got into trouble in the past for denying the Holocaust and claiming that women’s rights did not exist, but Vedal took steps to prevent this from happening again.
“I’d like to reiterate that the only control I have over what Neuro-sama says in the stream (besides singing) is the ability to override anything that could potentially compromise Twitch’s ToS,” Vedal said my city. “Otherwise, she reacts to videos on her own, she interacts with chat on her own, and she loves her viewers on her own.”
Read more: VTuber, controlled by AI, streams games on Twitch, denies the Holocaust
Hopefully Neuro-sama’s antics with edgelord are officially over because she’s moved on to making reactive content. A popular form of content creation, react to videos are exactly what they sound like: Twitch streamers and YouTubers sitting in front of their cameras, editing tons of videos and providing their raw reaction during a live stream. It’s almost voyeuristic in a way as you peer into the creator’s mind, getting to know how they feel about the content and, in some ways, the world at large.
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Twitch keeper Jake Lucky took to Twitter to share a clip of Neuro-sama reacting to Swedish streamer Hans “Forsen” Fors being bodyballed by Elder Ring‘c Radagon of the Golden Order and Elden Beast. Lucky noted that Neuro-sama has “an average of 5k concurrent viewers” watching Forsen get completely rocked, but video on demand (VOD) tells a completely different story in terms of viewership, which reaches 85,000 to 120,000 viewers depending on the video and its content.
“Forsen can’t play that well when he’s sober,” Neuro-sama said, repeating “lol” several times. “What? His reactions are funny.”
This reaction is a small segment of Neuro-sama’s Live on February 1st in which the AI-powered VTuber watches tons of content. This includes videos like moose shaking off its antlers, Minecraft stuff, other VTubers, and old Markiplier clips of him playing Five Nights at Freddy’s, among other things. Several times during the live broadcast, which attracted over 80,000 viewers, Neuro-sama watched Nothing, Forever24/7 Seinfeld-similar to an AI-generated show made by Mismatch Media using DALL-E, OpenAI GPT-3, etc. It was like AI begining, and I have no idea what’s going on in that timeline. Is this an alternate reality? Send help.
I was curious how Neuro-sama queued up the videos she would react to – or if she even did it herself – but Vedal told me, “the first react stream was mostly a test stream, so I fed videos based on suggestions from the Discord server . The reception from the fans has been very positive and I love seeing people so invested in this project. In the future, I have plans to do streams where the chat can suggest videos for her to watch (after they’ve been vetted by a moderator, of course).”
Read more: Generated by AI Seinfeld-Like Twitch’s “TV Show” is the height of absurdity
That’s what ultimately bothers me. While it’s amazing that an AI is sophisticated enough to act like a human Twitch streamer reacting to popular and/or interesting videos, it’s also disconcerting that an AI is capable of such things. This could make entire jobs, especially those in the content creation space, obsolete, especially with Neuro-sama’s rise in popularity. With nearly 140,000 followers on Twitch and approximately 42,000 YouTube subscribers— and videos on both platforms racking up tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of views — it may only be a matter of time before Neuro-sama takes down all your faves. More than that, though, it can become difficult to separate a real VTuber from an AI-generated one. The lines between humans and technology are officially starting to blur, everyone.
When asked if Vedal believed Neuro-sama had the potential to displace real steamers, he said, “I honestly don’t know. There seems to be an audience for it and there is room for many different forms of entertainment right now. There’s no reason they can’t work together, she even has some collaborations with human streamers coming soon!”
“Collaborating with human streamers” is pretty dystopian nonsense, but maybe Neuro-sama’s popularity could give some “human streamers” a boost. I can’t help but look at Neuro-sama with curious pessimism. Growing as a content creator is tough as you fight for attention in a competitive, unbalanced system. Monetizing your content is even more difficult, especially if it doesn’t generate the eyeballs needed to monetize it.
How much money Neuro-sama makes is anyone’s guess (I asked Vedal, and he declined to reveal how much revenue the streamer earns, suggesting “it wouldn’t be fair”), but one thing is clear: he plans to “[take] in places never before seen by AI. AI streamers are here to stay. So, get used to it.