A Japanese company is taking the idea of a virtual assistant to a new level.
By which I mean that their new virtual assistant is a tiny holographic lady who lives in what looks like a very expensive coffee maker and wants you to be her boyfriend/master.
“Azuma,” according to her bio on the Gatebox AI website, is a 20 year-old anime fan who likes eating donuts, cooking fried eggs, and obeying every command from you that she can understand.
And don’t worry, fellas, there’s no way your tiny waifu can escape from her glass prison!
Now, obviously, there is nothing inherently wrong with virtual assistants, or holograms, or talking to inanimate objects in jars if that’s what floats your boat. And there are plenty of perfectly decent people who raise virtual pets and play dating sims.
But watch this ad for Azuma and tell me it doesn’t look like the opening sequence of some creepy dystopian horror film.
This little horror isn’t here quite yet. The Japanese version, selling for the equivalent of $2700, won’t ship for another year. Presumably an English language version will come out some time after that.
I guess the question I have is this: Will MGTOWs hail Azuma as a big step towards the eventual replacement of all real human women?
Or will they be annoyed by all her naggy texts?
I will follow up once they discover her.
EDIT: Well, that was quick. See what the MGTOWs think in my post here.
H/T — GamerGhazi
Will it be enough, though?
Free her!
It’s like the sequel to AI, AI-yi-yi.
Ah… wow. I don’t know what to say about this. The idea sounds so sweet – just having a semi-intelligent little companion to interact with – but it needs to be taken much, much less seriously than it’s depicted here! Dystopian sci-fi film for sure 🙂
First thing which came to mind: What hath Eliza wrought?
Second thought: Most of them won’t think much of it because they can’t have sex with a hologram.
Just when I thought harem anime bullshit was the most problematic Japan could get they release this. I don’t know if I should be laughing at the ridiculous of it all or crying because there are plenty of MRA assholes who will view this as the herald of a new age
Yeah, that’s a moeblob alright.
SHE’S SHOWING OFF A WEDDING RING ON THE WEBSITE.
Yep.
Even in their sexbot fantasies, MGTOWs and incels rarely plan to get themselves a sexbot. Rather, they dream that other men will go for sexbots, forcing women to lower their standards and date (read: have sex with) incels.
Misogynists don’t seek to devalue women in order to do away with them, but to have power over them.
Okay, I understand the appeal, actually. Home AIs are already a thing, and this seems to be one of those but also with a good deal of personification. But then the angle of the ad appears to be the dude’s loneliness (I’m getting this from what he says at the end while falling asleep, and the fact that the girl-in-a-jar is the only person he ever talks to or who ever talks to him during the whole day) so it sorta makes sense, in the way that it supposedly provides something to help with that. Kinda like imaginary friends, ‘cept they also give you the weather and text you incessantly while at work.
Now, all that said… it’s so fucking creepy that it appears to just defeat the point.
@Troubelle
My sentiment exactly.
They’ll settle for nothing less than sexbots.
Or actual human women with the brain removed and replaced by a programmable AI, since the whole MGTOW mindset appears to be that women are supposed to be exactly that anyway.
ETA : ninja’d all the way down.
Who needs sexbots when there is so many gorgeous hookers at very reasonable prizes?
Who wants a 20 year old submissive sexbot when you can have a 30 year old nazi dominatrix?
So many pervert and fucked in the head people!
@Sinkable John
Can’t they learn to enjoy the company of a feline?
That was just sad and pathetic.
Not to mention – who’s going to make them sammiches? Or clean the house? *snerk*
I think I was creeped out by the constant texting. Its kinda cute but kinda sad too. I found myself wishing he had a pet. Or maybe he can’t have a pet and has social issues.
That said, we just bought an Alexa for our house. We haven’t hooked it up yet but my Mom (who is a senior citizen and homebound) seems really excited about it. We dont have any pets in the house and she has social anxieties, so maybe this virtual friend is a solution for that? Only without all the creepy text messaging.
Third thought: Gimme one with a cute catboy. He’s banned from texting me though.
Fourth thought: Would he be jealous of my boyfriend?
Fifth thought: Wish I could let him out of the jar. It seems awfully confining in there.
Sixth thought: Wait, am I seriously thinking about this?
Like some others have said, I honestly see the appeal in this.
But yeah, when I look at it from some other people’s perspectives… like how the MGTOWs will see this poor, caged anime girl… Well, hmm.
It does look like the set up for a horror story. I can see it now:
All is well until Lonely Guy meets a real, live woman and hits it off with her, but Azuma doesn’t want to share. She slowly starts sabotaging his life and relationships so she can have him all to herself…
That seems very much like the woman in the heating vent from Eraserhead.
I don’t really see the horror film trailer from the video itself, but I think that’s mostly because of the music. It’s definitely fodder for a cyber-horror mashup trailer.
@Troubelle
I don’t know that it matters. I’m pretty sure cats can sense assholes. For example I’ve never seen a single cat react to a certain shitstain’s presence in any other way than running away as far as possible.
And I remember myself on a particularly shitty night years ago. Back then I lived in a town where I knew pretty much every stray and even most house cats. I often went for walks at night and stopped at all the usual places and they’d come out of their hiding spots and come to me. I dunno, I got a thing with cats, they don’t get startled even if they don’t know me yet, maybe I smell friendly ? Or, more probably, maybe I smell like cat, since House Beast won’t leave me or my clothes alone. I mean right now he’s on my lap purring like a fracking drill with half his body in my bathrobe and his head in my sleeve – I’m typing with one hand because I can’t move my arm.
Well that night I was in a pretty dark place and just angry and bitter at the whole world. The kind of mood where you just hate everything down to the very ground you tread because it’s clearly making every effort to hurt your bare feet and even the stars look like they’re spelling out a giant “fuck you” in the night sky.
Well that night, not a single one of my cat friends came out to see me. They actively avoided me, and I think they were actually scared. One of them, normally the friendliest, just hissed and spat at the sight of me then bolted when I tried to get closer like he was chased by the biggest dog in town.
Now, meektoes ? They’re brimming with pure distilled hate, it’s kind of their default setting by now. Pretty sure cats and possibly other furry friends avoid ’em like the plague. Makes sense too : if even dull dumb humans can sense how shitty they are and avoid them, then there’s no way a superior species will react any differently.
*sigh*. This is just what Japan needs right now, isn’t it. More men shunning relationships with real women in favor of ones with computer-simulations of anime characters. I’m sure the Japanese government is just thrilled.
The video is like a Japanese version of “The foreigner”, by Camus: the singleness, the void, the tram, the absurd, the rutine…
The big difference is, in “The foreigner” there is a sense of joy, in the so shiny North African summer, the Mediterranean, the meeting with the friends… the main character even has a girlfriend, goes to the movies, to the beach…
The Jap version is oppressive indeed. Existencialism 3.0
It seems really handy to have an AI with a personality to help people around the house, yeah. I mean having something that can start coffee pots or turn on lights when you’re almost home after dark is really handy but the texting seems a bit too much. Maybe if it’s for weather or traffic updates and stuff like that but not to, like, tell you to come home. Geesh.
But a semi-intelligent AI with a personality would be cool, especially if it’s customizable with a variety of personalities and models. Like, a cute dog to greet you when you come home or maybe an Alfred Pennyworth.
Holy shit, I would TOTALLY want an AI like this but with Alfred. I want all the snark.
The only thing is that would the interactions be varied enough? While a semi-intelligent AI is cool in concept, I’d imagine if it talked to you often, it’ll start to repeat itself unless it has programmed a variety of different phrases or can learn to talk differently. Do we have the technology to replicate an actual personality that won’t become stale after a while?
But also
@Thousand Cock Stare:
I once flipped through one of those “readers,” an easy-to-read book for adults who are learning to read English. It was about a man who builds a robot assistant, and it all goes wrong. The robot lures the man’s dog to its death with cookies, then locks the man in the bathroom, where he expires. It was horrifying and I burst into ugly, full-body, childlike sobs. The worst part was the illustrations. They showed the man cradling his dog’s lifeless body and weeping. I wish I could scrub it out of my mind. It really upset me.
Silly, but I’ve never told anyone that before.
This idea will no doubt be a it with men & boys who constantly claim to hate women… the irony of course is that they obsess over women at every chance. Obsess over what a sovereign female chooses to wear, how she chooses to ink/pierce herself, what job she chooses, what she eats, if she dares to get a cat, dares to not marry, dares to say bad words, etc.
I am so not even remotely sad for any guy who purchases an imitation female. He gets something to fall head over heels in love with, and he can’t hurt a real woman in the process.
Extra point for women getting slogged down by one less woman-hating guy.