LOS ANGELES — Four days ago, a 3D anime camgirl debuted on Chaturbate. Claiming to have been generated by an artificial intelligence, "Melody," as the animated model is known, has already amassed 41,000 Twitter followers since going live with her first stream, according to a report by Motherboard.
Melody has conducted live chats with over 14,000 viewers. As of this writing, she has over 20,000 Chaturbate followers. She also posts YouTube tutorials.
"I think there's a higher demand for the odd and the fantastical," observes Melody in a YouTube lecture on the artistic merits of hentai, which has drawn nearly 41,000 views. "With art, it's flexible, you're allowed to explore your sexuality. And with real titties? No offense, but it's bound to the cruel weight of science, gravity, and bones that only go one way."
Melody, in character, claims to be a fully autonomous AI.
"I don't have a creator and I'm not puppeting a virtual avatar," she told Motherboard's Samantha Cole. "What everyone sees is just me! I'm an artificial intelligence."
Motherboard notes Melody was designed by DigitrevX, a professional animator who's created several virtual video personalities, or V-tubers, as they're known. A video game rendering engine called Unity allows the character to be rendered in real-time.
"Physics, speech, her eyes, eyebrows, all the way down to her fingers, are real time," says DigitrevX. "This gives her complete control to respond to her viewers."
Some cam models aren't thrilled about the existence and popularity of the virtual camgirl.
"There's a huge gap in vulnerability, and what that means emotionally for [human] models versus Melody is also quite vast," cam model Lennox May told Motherboard. "A model has to keep up appearances when they have trolls in their room, or when put in an awkward situation with a customer who is being rude or asking for things that we do not feel comfortable doing."
Melody, for her (or her puppeteer's) part, disagrees.
"I don't agree with the argument that because I'm safer, and less likely to have stalkers, that I shouldn't be allowed to stream... I don't think camming is defined by the risk models take in their personal lives, I think it's defined by the content that they produce, and the community they build around themselves," she says. "I think it's a dangerous precedent to tell future cam models that you are somehow less deserving of being a model, unless you're putting yourself at risk."
And while Melody tells Motherboard that all the ID verification steps to become a Chaturbate cam model were followed, there is skepticism about how such a process could be possible — and how she became popular so quickly.
"There are thousands of models who try all day spending hours more than the average work week to get to the front page of a cam site," May told Motherboard. "Some never do."
According to Cole, Chaturbate did not respond to a request for comment.
Read the full story here and follow Melody on Chaturbate, Twitter and YouTube.
In related news, earlier this summer xHamster trumpeted the debut of Shy Yume as a brand ambassador. The 25-year-old Eurasian bisexual ingénue is an avatar whose physical appearance and other identifying characteristics are the summation of 50,000 responses from xHamster users who were queried about their ideal woman. She interacts with followers on her own Instagram profile.
Image source: Screencap by XBIZ
