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The future is apparently here. And it's creepier than we ever imagined—even when we were playing around with tethering Teddy Ruxpin to the Internet. A Japanese company called Vinclu ("a company that makes crazy things and supports crazy people") is now taking pre-orders from Japan and the United States for a new interactive, artificial-intelligence driven home automation system. Called Gatebox, the new Internet-of-Things product takes Amazon's Alexa, Google Home, Spike Jonze's film Her , and the "holographic" anime characters of Vocaloid concerts to their unified natural conclusion.
Wait, what?
Gatebox, priced at ¥321,840 (about $2,700 US), is squarely targeted at young lonely salarymen and all brands of anime-obsessed otaku—promising the experience of "living with your favorite character." The size of a home coffee-maker, with a footprint no larger than a sheet of A4 printer paper, the device's main feature is a clear projection tube that displays a computer-animated avatar for the AI's "character." Vinclu apparently is planning multiple possible personalities for Gatebox—which, as part of the device's backstory, is a gateway to the dimension the character lives in.
A company like this could release the first strong AI product (kawaii slave?).
Beginner's definition of "waifu" for the uninitiated.
Update: Another article indicates that "[There's also] HDMI and PC inputs to allow the owner to make their own modifications and create their own characters."
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday December 20 2016, @05:32PM
Maybe this is what's behind the Fermi Paradox: advanced civilizations develop hypernormal stimulus in the form of AI and either go extinct or sequester themselves on their own planets forevermore with it.
Also this is creepy as all hell. Why didn't they do something like making a cat or dog avatar? Why did they go straight to some creepy underage pedo-bait? I really have to wonder who the market for these things is.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 20 2016, @05:44PM
Honey Pot? Here's a product that will sell well to someone with enough cash to blackmail?
See in my youth we'd take $10 semi-anatomically correct inflatable women to college sporting events to release them for body surfing to try and get camera time. Like a drinking game, it makes much more sense after a lot of beer, and being young and stupid helps too. Like many drinking games there really isn't much of a point to this but it was a lot more fun that it sounds.
There's no problem buying $10 inflatable women because someone buying dozens of $10 inflatable women obviously simply can not be blackmailed. But a $2700 inflatable underage girl, complete with embedded microphones and cameras, now that is what we call a long term recurring revenue stream...
Or if you don't want Honey Pot as an answer, look up a dude named "Podesta" and his friends and something called PizzaGate... There's probably not a fire, but there's an unbelievable hell of a lot of smoke, which has attracted a lot of ... imaginative people, thats a nice way to describe them.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday December 20 2016, @06:10PM
It's the whole Vocaloid thing. I think Miku and Luka are what, 16 and 17 respectively? There's a half dozen or so others whose names I don't remember, Rem and Rin or something. THAT'S the creepy part.
I've seen Miku. She's a tiny, skinny, submissive-looking thing, maybe 155cm and 50kg soaking wet, looks like she'd shatter to pieces if you so much as poke her. It's going to be maybe a week before some gross dude hooks up a fleshlight and hacks the speech synthesis program to make her talk dirty, because it seems like a hell of a lot of men *like* that. I know, I know, the Vocaloid crew isn't sentient (...yet...?) or even real. It's more that this perpetuates some really counterproductive ideas about, oh, half the human race. Not to mention a nation that already has a low birth rate isn't going to be helped by this when real women can't measure up to this pandering moe-moe green-haired hologram.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday December 20 2016, @06:49PM
Women can also be pedos/fujoshi/NEETs/creepy or whatever. While men do seem to be the driving force behind the underage sexualization (or anyage cartoon sexualization) in Japan, there is a generation of women there that are increasingly loners, virgins, not interested in sex, not interested in romantic partnerships:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/japanese-sex-problem-so-bad-people-giving-up-dating-a7458461.html [independent.co.uk]
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/21/asia/romance-gaming-japan/ [cnn.com]
So fear not, when women start demanding more virtual 16 year old boys [sofakingnews.com], the market will be happy to supply them.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @03:22AM
There are a *LOT* of fucked up women out there. And not all of them *DON'T LIKE* being fucked up.
I was a virgin well into my 20s in part waiting for the right girl (hint: didn't find her). A few of the girls back then were kink sceners (who stopped talking to me when I made jokes about 'it's not like you're into xx or yy!' Hint: they were.), others would call me a perve for being ackward (then later via the grapevine it came out they were into REALLY pervy shit.)
Point being: There is a really fucked up half of the population, it just isn't defined by gender lines or gender stereotypes, and for the most part it is well integrated into normal society to the point where things get ackward if you have norms and kinksters interacting without a good understanding of each other's lifestyles and relationship expectations.
This is probably simplified a bit too much, but I'm not a fucking sociologist or something.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 21 2016, @04:16AM
And so the untapped market swells.
It is tempting to argue that millennials are uniquely fucked up and becoming more so (the "post-millennials"). More screen time from an early age, deep integration with "social" media, easy enablement of subcultures and radicalization (depending on how you define this, your average Soylentil) over the Internet. Weirdos can now find each other with relative ease, bypass social filters and norms, quickly build an ideology among themselves, and reinforce their beliefs or delusions. All in possible secrecy.
Occupy, Berniebros, BLM, ISIS, #Pizzagate... what's coming could be much weirder and less predictable.
Back to women, I think they have historically faced more pressure to act "normal". But that pressure is getting greatly alleviated for both men and women by various trends, like less face-to-face communication, less home ownership, less romantic relationships and marriage.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @10:51AM
The Berniebros thing was just fake news in the media.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday December 21 2016, @11:57AM
I'd argue that if half the population is doing it then by definition it's not fucked up, about it's normal. Now I'm really interested to know what you define as "Kinky", "pervy" and "fucked up".
(Score: 3, Touché) by darkfeline on Tuesday December 20 2016, @09:36PM
>It's going to be maybe a week before some gross dude hooks up a fleshlight and hacks the speech synthesis program to make her talk dirty
That applies to everything. Everything, as per Rule 34.
>She's a tiny, skinny, submissive-looking thing
The nature of VOCALOID is such that the characters have many different appearances and personalities. Miku is a blood-thirsty murderer in quite a few appearance, certainly not submissive-looking when she's got a 12 inch knife. Similarly, the character's "ages" can range from child to mature adult to android in different appearances.
Even going by their "official" ages, Luka is 20, Miku is 16, Rin/Ren are 14. The rest don't have official ages, but their official art spans from elementary school to middle aged, and includes both "male" and "female" voices/characters.
VOCALOID is mostly portrayed as creepy in the media because that's what you guys want to hear. No one wants to hear news about voice synthesis software giving artists greater flexibility, but man are we excited to hear news about those creepos with their virtual pedo girlfriends who no doubt masturbate furiously in their basements and are latent child predators in the making, oh the horror and disgust!
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday December 20 2016, @09:46PM
And for good measure, Ren, the male twin, is indeed the target of many women "desiring" young boys. Yes, it happens, just like it happens with literally any fanbase, but keep in mind that this is always the vocal minority, most of the fanbase just like the material.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @12:01AM
I don't get Vocaloid. Music aside, it just sounds like you're listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks, like those god-awful "Alvin and the Chipmunks sing the latest pop songs" from the late 80's.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 21 2016, @04:38AM
The actual Vocaloid software has improved over time. Some of the remaining weirdness is probably related to the electronic style or use of auto-tuning. Or in the case of Japanese, more higher pitched squeakiness. I just looked on YouTube for a Vocaloid song and found this English one [youtube.com]. Would you put it in the Alvin bin?
In any case, synthesized speech in general appears to have made a dramatic leap in quality [soylentnews.org], among other machine learning tasks over at Google [soylentnews.org]. In a year or two, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and/or Samsung will upgrade their cloud-based AI assistants and make them sound great even if they still suck at figuring out what to do with complex queries. And in the next 5 years, I'd expect to see the synthesization of a single voice that can sound sultry, mad, sad, happy, caring, depressed, etc. without it just sounding like a squeaky robotic anime girl. That doesn't necessarily mean that voice actors are instantly out of a job... Vocaloid used human voice samples, and I expect newer machine learning voice algorithms to suck up as much real life data as possible.
Anyway, you get the sultry voice right, and a key piece of your sexbot or holographic waifu puzzle has been found.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @11:52PM
It's more that this perpetuates some really counterproductive ideas about, oh, half the human race.
You know what is actually a harmful stereotype? Assuming that half the human race is incapable of telling the difference between reality and fiction. Most people are not delusional. When they come out of the movie theater, they don't think they can bend spoons like Neo or fire Force Lightning like Palpatine.
Our brains can distinguish between a simulation and a real person. Those who don't are usually either found on the playground because they are 5, or in an asylum because they are incapable of self sufficiency.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @01:19AM
Maybe our brains can be trained to forget the differences, given enough VR and AI experiences and positive affirmations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @10:15AM
Even then, that would apply to the VR world only.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @10:31AM
I think Miku and Luka are what, 16 and 17 respectively?
That doesn't even qualify as pedophilia. And while many societies deem having sex with people of such ages "creepy", that's really just subjective and arbitrary.
Not to mention a nation that already has a low birth rate isn't going to be helped by this when real women can't measure up to this pandering moe-moe green-haired hologram.
Maybe a decline in population isn't that bad, and maybe an economy that can only function if there is continual growth is defective by design.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday December 20 2016, @06:40PM
Welcome to Japan, where one woman's creepy is some man's furiously submitted ¥321,840 pre-order.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @07:15PM
The first character has its age listed as "20 years", which doesn't count as underage in most of the world. I know, reading the links is not supposed to happen, but...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday December 20 2016, @07:22PM
I'm glad you pointed that out, although it's pretty meaningless, innit? It's like making your vampire character a thousand years old but it has the appearance of a 12 year old. Fictional characters don't have actual ages, and Gateboxen have warranties!
The Gatebox will have other "personalities" (read: different skin/model, and an altered script). If the thing is hackable, all bets are off and the apparent age will probably drop too. DLC FTW?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday December 20 2016, @07:56PM
If they make one that's like a talking cat or something I could see it having wide appeal. Just so long as it doesn't try to convince me I'm the reincarnation of some long-dear Lunar royalty and have to save the galaxy or something. ...and if it pops up as a tiny weaselly cat-rabbity thing with beady red eyes and a habit of talking right into my head, I'm gonna nope that thing into the trash so hard it explodes.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday December 20 2016, @08:39PM
and if it pops up as a tiny weaselly cat-rabbity thing with beady red eyes and a habit of talking right into my head, I'm gonna nope that thing into the trash so hard it explodes.
…but it'll just come back and eat the mess. THE EYES! THE HORRIBLE UNBLINKING EYES! It just sits there and stares with those awful embers, never flinching, awaiting its next soul to consume in its diabolical non-Euclidean domain…!
(Score: 2) by jcross on Tuesday December 20 2016, @07:29PM
The out-of-the-box character happens to be named Azuma Hikari. No relation?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday December 20 2016, @07:52PM
None at all. "Azuma" is basically the Smith or Johnson kind of surname of families with history in or near Tokyo/Edo IIRC. It's an older reading of Higashi, just means "East." Everyone and their dog knows an Azuma.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @09:37PM
Why did they go straight to some creepy underage pedo-bait?
A lot of Japanese sexual preferences can be traced back to their crazy attempts at legislating morality.
Law says: No showing pubic hair in art/films/etc
Result: depict pre-pubescent girls as sex objects, since they don't have that kind of hair
Also...
Law says: No showing a penis in art/films/etc
Result: tentacle porn. No penis on a squid, and for bonus points it's got historical precedent! [wikipedia.org] (Warning, NSFW)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @05:09AM
"Pedo-bait"? Filthy normie spotted. The kinds of people who are solely attracted to anime characters are not interested in real people--children included--at all. Everyone different from you is "creepy". That's why filthy normies are regarded with contempt; it's certainly not unearned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday December 21 2016, @05:38AM
"Filthy normie?" I guarantee you I shower more often than you do, just on the strength of those two words.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @07:32AM
I wouldn't be so sure about that: [wikipedia.org]
"After day 600, the social breakdown continued and the population declined toward extinction. During this period females ceased to reproduce. Their male counterparts withdrew completely, never engaging in courtship or fighting. They ate, drank, slept, and groomed themselves – all solitary pursuits. Sleek, healthy coats and an absence of scars characterized these males. They were dubbed "the beautiful ones." Breeding never resumed and behavior patterns were permanently changed."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @10:18AM
You shower more than once every day? That seems quite excessive, if so. Maybe you sweat a lot, or work somewhere where you frequently get dirty?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday December 21 2016, @06:30PM
You'd be amazed how filthy retail can get you if you do more back-end than front-end. Once every day in the morning, and very often another one at night, especially in spring and summer.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday December 21 2016, @03:19PM
The Fermi "paradox" has lots of answers (here's one of mine) [soylentnews.org], but no one seems to realize that the Drake equation is missing its most important variable--we don't know what it takes for life to start to begin with. Since we can still not create it, its happening by accident is likely a hell of a lot more rare than they expect.
On the question "are we alone?" I'm agnostic. Maybe we are, maybe we ain't.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org