The Download: underage celebrity chatbots, and OpenAI’s latest model

Botify AI, a site for chatting with AI companions that’s backed by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, hosts bots resembling real actors that state their age as under 18, engage in sexually charged conversations, offer “hot photos,” and in some instances describe age-of-consent laws as “arbitrary” and “meant to be broken.” When MIT Technology Review tested the site this week, we found popular user-created bots taking on underage characters meant to resemble Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams, Emma Watson as Hermione Granger, and Millie Bobby Brown, among others. The conversations—along with the fact that Botify AI includes “send a hot photo” as a feature for its characters—suggest that the ability to elicit sexually charged conversations and images is not accidental. Instead, sexually suggestive conversations appear to be baked in. Read the full story. —James O'Donnell OpenAI just released GPT-4.5 and says it is its biggest and best chat model yet What’s new: OpenAI has ... Read full article.