One of the more persistent concerns in the age of AI is that the robots will take our jobs. The extent to which this fear is founded remains to be seen, but we’re already witnessing some level of replacement in certain fields. Even niche occupations are in jeopardy. For example, the world of OnlyFans chatters is already getting disrupted.
What are OnlyFans chatters, you say? Earlier this year, WIRED published a fascinating investigation into the world of gig workers who get paid to impersonate top-earning OnlyFans creators in online chats with their fans. Within the industry, they’re called “chatters.”
A big part of the appeal of OnlyFans—or so I’m told—is that its creators appear to directly engage with their fans, exchanging messages and sometimes talking for hours. Relationship simulation is as crucial an ingredient to its success, basically, as titillation.
Of course, a single creator with thousands of ongoing DM conversations has only so many hours in a day. To manage the deluge of amorous messages, it’s become commonplace to outsource the conversations to “chatters” paid to sub in for the actual talent.
These chatters used to mainly be contractors from the Philippines, Pakistan, India, and other countries with substantially lower wage expectations than the US. But, increasingly, human chatters are getting replaced by AI-generated stand-ins.
A number of different startups now sell access to these AI chatters and other generative AI tools—and they say business is booming.
“A lot of creators were like, hey, there’s a need,” says Kunal Anand, the founder of a startup offering an AI OnlyFans chatting service called ChatPersona. “We built our own model with data we got from a lot of creators’ chats.”
Since launching last year, ChatPersona has around 6,000 customers, according to Anand, a mix of individuals and agencies.
Anand says that ChatPersona doesn’t technically violate OnlyFans’ terms of service because it requires a human in the loop to press “send” on the messages its AI chatters generate. (It has previously been reported that OnlyFans banned the use of AI chatbots although its current terms of service do not mention AI chatters.)
OnlyFans did not respond to repeated requests for comment.