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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 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.
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(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.