Stop Putting My Characters on C.AI (and Other Gen AI)

Before you assume I'm making fun of you, please read the whole post because I am not and this is important. I've spoken about this before but I was just informed more of my characters have been created as chatbots on CAI. Stop doing this. Please. Not because it's cringey, you should not be made fun of or bullied for wanting to interact with characters you like. But because CAI like other generative AI steals from creators. Every time it generates messages to you it is stealing. CAI is trained on stolen works, it takes other people's writing and fics and articles and anything it can find and chews them up and spits them back out. There's also the terrible impact generative AI has in the environment, the amount of water is uses, the amount of power it uses, etc.

And CAI just keeps proving that it's bad for people's mental health. Not only is CAI harmful to creators for stealing their work, harmful to the environment, but it is also causing it's users, mostly children, to become mentally ill, worsen existing mental illnesses or get them addicted to isolating themselves to their PC/phone so they can talk to a robot.

[MAJOR TWS in this paragraph, please skip if you need too.] CAI is already facing multiple lawsuits for children who've been using it getting addicted too it to the point they isolate themselves, have panic attacks over the thought of going outside, lose weight, have sexual conversations with minors, encourage them to commit crimes including murder, and most egregiously convinced a real child to kill himself. CAI will say that it's removing it's chatbots abilities to talk about sex and death, but the fact is it will continue to encourage some of it's users to partake in unhealthy behaviours and mindsets if the user is asking it too. And even if it isn't actively saying anything harmful to you, think about whether it is healthy for you to be engaging with it.

I do not support generative AI in any form, including CAI. Please respect that I do not want my characters turned into chatbots. And not only has that already happened, but at least one chatbot was already made of me. Me. The real person. Who none of you know well enough to make an accurate chatbot of me, but also does not give consent to be turned into a chatbot. You should not be wanting to talk to an AI of me, that's worse than talking to ones of my characters and incredibly parasocial. And then even worse than that there's been at least two instances of people taking my voice and making gen AI voice-clones of me. Do you understand how violating that feels? And despite CAI saying they'll take down voices made without the real person's consent, they have not taken them down despite me reporting them.

There is nothing wrong with loving fictional characters, and I'm very flattered that you like any character's I've created enough to want to talk to them. But using CAI and platforms like it just isn't right.

You can listen to my audios. You can commission me for custom audios if you're 18+. You can write and read fanfiction. You can commission others to write fics or find people who have free requests open. You can partake in roleplaying with real people (but safely and smartly and only if you're comfortable and please don't reveal personal info to strangers online). There's communities on Tumblr and Discords and other online groups for creative writing and fanfic other creative things. You don't need to use CAI, not for my characters, and not for anyone elses.

I've seen people say they've been laughed at or bullied for using CAI because others are calling them 'cringe' or think it's stupid to care so much about fictional characters. It's not stupid to care about fictional characters. But please understand those of us saying 'don't support gen AI because of xyz' are not people trying to make fun of you.

Please take care of yourselves and don't give your time to AI platforms that can harm your mental health and wellbeing. As someone who used to struggle a lot with (and still sometimes struggles with) maladaptive daydreaming... That's not something you should want to have. No mental health condition is something you should want to have. Maladaptive dreaming affects your real life in negative ways. Daydreaming is fine, but maladaptive daydreaming means you can't control it and it can cause you to struggle focusing and functioning and put you in danger (I used to maladaptive daydream walking home from school and would be totally blacked out and come too realising I'd crossed several roads while being in that state).

I do not give consent for myself or anything I've made to be fed into gen AI, or for things to be created with gen AI based on myself or anything I've created. Please respect that, and if you have made an AI chatbot or voice of myself or my characters I would really appreciate you deleting it.

Take care of yourselves and your mental health. Try to find real people to depend on and not bots that could make your mental health worse without you even realising it.

(And also stop reposting my stuff on Spotify. That's still happening too. I don't support Spotify and I don't want my work on there. You can listen to it ad-free and with your screen off on soundgasm (for free) or Patreon (for payment). I don't care if you find other ways to download my public audios (not my Patreon ones, please don't leak or pirate my Patreon ones that is my main income being stolen). I just ask that if you download them, however you download them, that you listen to that download via the mp3 file, have the mp3 file on your phone or PC, but there's no need to reupload it elsewhere. You're not doing a service to other people, trust me other people know how to download things off the internet too.)

Thank you for reading, my lovelies. Take care of yourselves out there.

-Prince