One of the most persistent concerns in the age of AI is that robots will take our jobs. The extent to which this fear is founded remains to be seen, but we are already seeing some level of replacement in certain fields. Even skilled occupations are in danger. For example, the world of Onlyfans chatters is already changing.
That are Just talkers, you say? Earlier this year, WIRED published a fascinating investigation into the world of workers who are paid to impersonate the highest-earning OnlyFans creators in online chats with their fans. Within the industry, they are called “charlatanists.”
A big part of the appeal of Onlyfans (or so I’m told) is that its creators seem to interact directly with their fans, exchanging messages and sometimes talking for hours. Relationship simulation is as crucial an ingredient to your success, basically, as arousal.
Of course, a single creator with thousands of direct conversations going on has only so many hours in a day. To manage the flood of love messages, it has become common to outsource conversations to “charlatans” who are paid to substitute for real talent.
These charlatans tended to be primarily contractors from the Philippines, Pakistan, India, and other countries with salary expectations substantially lower than those in the United States. But increasingly, human charlatans are being replaced by AI-generated substitutes.
Several different startups now sell access to these conversations about AI and other generative AI tools, and they say business is booming.
“A lot of creators said, hey, there’s a need,” says Kunal Anand, founder of a startup that offers an AI Onlyfans chat service called ChatPersona. “We built our own model with data we got from many creator chats.”
Since launching last year, ChatPersona has around 6,000 customers according to Anand, a mix of individuals and agencies.
Anand says ChatPersona doesn’t technically violate OnlyFans’ terms of service because it requires a human in the loop to hit “send” on the messages its AI users generate. (It has been previously reported that Onlyfans banned the use of AI chatbots although it is current terms of service don’t mention AI users.)
Onlyfans did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The field is already quite full. Some of the best-known tools have catchy names like FlirtFlow, ChatterCharms, and Botly. Another competitor, the relatively generic-named Supercreator, has a suite of AI tools, from AI-generated scripts to an assistant called “Inbox Copilot” that algorithmically sorts Sims, moving “spenders” to the side. top of the list and ignoring the “freeloaders”. “
Eden, a former OnlyFans creator who now runs a boutique agency called Heiss Talent (and who would only speak on the record using her first name, citing privacy concerns) is an enthusiastic adopter of this technology. She represents five creators and says they all use Supercreator’s AI tools. “It’s an incredible increase in sales because you can target people based on their spending,” he says.