Influencer Launches AI 'Virtual Girlfriend,' Earns $70,000 In First Week

A social media influencer who launched a "virtual girlfriend" AI-powered chatbot has already made more than $70,000 in one week, NBC News reports.

Caryn Marjorie, who has 1.8 million subscribers on Snapchat, said she wanted to offer the voice-based CarynAI to "cure loneliness." CarynAI, which offers "private, personalized conversations" with an AI version of Marjorie, according to its website, has already gone viral and earned the influencer more than $71,610 in revenue after one week of beta testing, with more than 1,000 users accessing the chatbot at a price of $1 per minute, Fortune.com reports.

"CarynAI is the first step in the right direction to cure loneliness. Men are told to suppress their emotions, hide their masculinity, and to not talk about issues they are having," Marjorie tweeted on Thursday (May 11). "I vow to fix this with CarynAI. I have worked with the world’s leading psychologists to seamlessly add CBT and DBT within chats. This will help undo trauma, rebuild physical and emotional confidence, and rebuild what has been taken away by the pandemic."

CarynAI's team said it spent more than 2,000 hours designing and coding the chatbot in an effort to offer "immersive AI experience." John Meyer, CEO of Forever Voices, which developed the chatbot by analyzing Marjorie's now-deleted YouTube content, called the partnership with the influencer "an incredible step forward in the future of AI-to-Human interaction" in a tweet shared on Thursday.

CarynAI is reported to give users an intimate experience, but not intended to offer "sexually explicit interactions, though several outlets have reported the chatbot has done so when prompted. Marjorie said the AI was "not programmed to do this and has seemed to go rogue" in a statement to Insider addressing the reports.

"My team and I are working around the clock to prevent this from happening again," Marjorie said.