Human NPCs, phlubbing your partner and AI influencers fail to to out-weird Elon Musk’s latest X-rated escapade.

Hosted by Matt Armitage & Richard Bradbury

Produced by Richard Bradbury for BFM89.9

Image by Kulturpop via MidJourney

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In this episode of Mattsplained, hosts Richard Bradbury and Matt Armitage explore the weird world of recent breakthroughs in science and technology. First up is a peculiar trend called "NPCs," where content creators pretend to be non-playable characters in video games. These NPC streamers mimic repetitive behavior, earning substantial amounts of money through livestreams. The hosts speculate on the potential reasons behind this trend and its commercial implications.

Moving on, they delve into the rise of AI influencers. While virtual influencers like lil miquela have been around for a few years, new AI models like Dall-e, midjourney, and stable diffusion have made it easier for anyone to create their own AI influencer. These AI influencers can maintain a perpetual and flawless online presence without experiencing content fatigue. Most AI influencers present as attractive individuals, predominantly young females, and cater to a growing audience across various social media platforms.

The hosts also touch on "phubbing," the act of ignoring someone in favor of one's phone. Studies have shown that phubbing can lead to negative feelings in relationships, emphasizing the importance of communication to strengthen bonds.

The podcast then takes an unexpected turn, discussing Elon Musk's recent acquisition of Twitter and its subsequent rebranding as "X." The hosts question the rationale behind the name change and Musk's plans to transform the platform into a super app centered around audio, video, messaging, and banking, powered by AI. They highlight the challenges of Twitter's pivot to fintech and the potential issues related to regulations, trust, and competition.

The episode concludes with some lighter topics, such as TikTok's introduction of a text service similar to Twitter's and the unintentional association of Twitter's rebranding with an adult streaming service called "Xvideo."

Overall, the podcast covers an array of unusual and intriguing topics, offering insights into the strange and evolving world of science, technology, and social media trends.

As summarised by ChatGPT

[00:00:23] Matt Armitage: Hey Rich. Well I hope I can live up to that. Um, 'cause this first piece isn't exactly a breakthrough in, in science and technology. 


And in fact, I don't think any of the stories this week are actually breakthroughs in science and technology. So, um, I dunno. Uh, but they are all weird stories, so this is, I mean, that'll do. Yeah, exactly. So, um, This is more of a cultural trend, Uhhuh. So there was a, a thing that became popular a few years ago, which was the kind of not safe for work version of streaming games. 


Uh, by which I don't mean people using colorful language. It was kind of a, a, a collision of the. Only fans and kind of Twitch cultures. And that kind of blossomed, you know, especially over the pandemic because, well, uh, I guess people weren't in offices and they didn't really have to care about what their browser histories, uh, were saying about them for, for a year or two. 


Um, so this kind of blurs or overlaps slightly with. That in that there are not safe work extensions of it, but broadly speaking, it falls into the area of what most of the social media sites consider to be, uh, you know, acceptable, you know, PG 14 or, or whatever. Yeah. And that's the world of NPCs. So non 


[00:01:46] Matt Armitage: characters. 


Yeah. So, okay. We, we know what MPCs are. Um, Uh, the, the non playable characters in games. Mm-hmm. So this is a trend where content creators pretend to be those non playable characters, so, huh. That's right. People pretending to be the thing that people hate most about the games that they play. Um, One of the trends that we've talked about in terms of, um, AI and gaming is the expansion of language models. 


Mm-hmm. To try and get rid of some of that awfulness around NPCs to make their actions and their conversations more realistic. And now, I'm not a big gamer as everyone who tunes into this show regularly knows. So I think I'll let Rich tell everyone how frustrating it can be to play something that's incredibly immersive, has fantastic gameplay, and then it has a bunch of poorly programmed NPCs bumbling around. 


That was one thing. And then, you know, you could just be walking around somewhere and it's just this case of, you know, they issue this one line or, or two lines to tell you what you're supposed to be doing, and then you walk away. Walk back within 15 to 20 seconds and then they issue that same line again and you're just like, oh, come on. 


You know? I mean, I understand it's a world and you've built this world and you can't give everybody multiple lines, but just a little bit of effort, you know, just a 


No, I don't get it. It's, they're behaving repetitively and they say the same few phrases over and over again no matter what questions you ask them and go through that same menu of, you know, a few actions, but they're earning huge money via tips from live streams. Uh, one report I read said that, To one of the leading N P C streamers, pinky Doll claims to earn up to 7,000 US dollars a day from her streams. 


What I mean, that is enormous business. However, You look at it, you know, in a sense it's a bit like a, uh, it's kind of like an eight bit version of Poppy. Mm. Uh, the virtual pop star who is actually a, a, a person. But whereas that's more of a straightforward art project, uh, kind of, you know, of the flip side of ida, the, uh, art based AI model that we've. 


Talked about before. Yep. These N P C influences are very much pushing content that is entertainment based, if not, you know, purely commercial. Now, I'm not gonna list out all of the N P C stars, but it does seem to be a growing trend and a movement and some of the biggest streamers put a lot of effort into the costumes and the backdrops for the, the videos. 


They choose a vocabulary for each stream that. Ranges from repeated random sounds to simple phrases, and it ranges from being, you know, just vaguely interesting to being white noise in the background to sometimes being absurdly funny. But then, you know, if, if machines can become believably human, which is what we're seeing with ai, why shouldn't people become unbelievably mechanical? 


[00:05:34] Matt Armitage: I. I mean, I'm actually quite jealous of this, to be honest. If I could pair these shows down to half a dozen words and earn 7,000 US dollars every time, I absolutely would. Um, but you know, as I said to you on Rochet and on Bbe last week, I'm a cyber phantom and I don't have a realistic head. 


Mm-hmm. Um, That actually makes me perfectly placed to become part of another emerging trend, which is the AI influencer. Now, I, I can see that Richard wants to jump in and tell me that there's nothing new about virtual influencers. Virtual influencers rather, and Yes, that is true. Uh, we've had c g I based, uh, avatars like little McKayla for a few years now. 


Mm-hmm. But what's. Different now is that you don't have to be, you know, a designer with mad skills to invent your own influencer. With tools like Dali and Mid Journey and Stable Diffusion, those tools can do it all for you. Yeah, they can create influencers who are always living their best lives. Never experience content fatigue, 


[00:06:42] Matt Armitage: about here then? 


I know, I mean, it's often the case that, you know, someone says, oh, this is a trend and it's just one account that somebody's seen on, on TikTok. There are, I mean, to be honest, I've got no idea how many accounts like this. There are, uh, there are some popular accounts like. Miller Sophia, I'll come back to, uh, her in air quotes in a minute. 


Um, which have thousands of followers and thousands of likes on some of the posts. Um, some of these AI influencers have video versions as well, uh, which has allowed this phenomenon to move to TikTok, as well as to spread on Instagram and Twitter. Uh, Most, or at least the ones I've seen, seem to acknowledge that they are digital creations. 


They call themselves virtual models, virtual girls, whatever. Um, and they do seem to be a lot of them because the recommendation engines of those sites recommend you loads of other similar accounts and some of the accounts themselves promote other AI influencers Now, How many accounts there are of AI creations, uh, that poses real people that don't acknowledge that they are fake, that. 


[00:08:11] Richard Bradbury: Right. Um, I. I might already know the answer to this, and I suspect a lot of people tuning in might already know the answer to this as well. 


But what kind of content are we talking 


And the, the, the locations and settings of the shots are your standard kind of it girl influencer type stuff. Mm-hmm. Balcony of the, the hotel room with a. Exotic backdrop, um, by the pool or in the pool, the occasional, you know, lounging on the bed shot and the accounts vary from the. Essentially believable to the, uh, you know, I've only got a free account with the last generation of the AI type cartoonish, and the shots do tend to be uncomplicated. 


You don't see a lot of, uh, group shots at this point, not a lot of partying or kind of, uh, eating type shots because I think the, the added complexity would increase the potential for, uh, unreal rendering. In those, uh, you know, some elements to spoil the, the perfect image of those 


I 


We already treat each other like non playable characters. True. And. Not to mention that, you know, we live in this filtered world. Uh, skin smoothing apps give everyone flawless complexions. So the real influences are often pushing themselves into that realm of being artificial anyway, airbrushing, every inch of exposed skin, tweaking the eye shape, tweaking other features. 


Eventually, you know, as the virtual appears more real. They kind of meet in the middle. Mm-hmm. So, you know, I mentioned Miller Sophia before whose profiler fan via piece on futurism. So Miller presents as a 19 year old blonde woman from Finland, and that character even has its own website and accompanying fashion portfolio. 


I mean, 


[00:11:02] Matt Armitage: Yeah, but I'm not sure if it does intentionally. So for people who don't remember, we covered a strain in fashion that's creating impossible garments that can only be worn digitally. Now, I. In the past, this has been, um, mostly for gaming and online communities, but the twist here is that you can actually now have your real life persona photoshopped into the garment, maybe on the red carpet, at the Met Ball for, for example. 


So you have this kind of keepsake of this impossible creation that, that, you know, you appear to have worn in public. Hmm. Uh, so the positioning of, uh, of these characters as. Models, uh, again, air quotes does make you wonder if the, uh, creators are looking to monetize via, you know, fashion and swimwear brands. 


Uh, for example, you know, Opposing Miller in their newest lines or advertising hotels or other destinations mm-hmm. Who might not have the budget to engage a real life influencer. Uh, and that's kind 


[00:12:11] Matt Armitage: Actually why, unfortunately is a, is a word you're gonna be saying a lot today. 


Um, it, it is kind of hard to see at this point. Obviously there's the, you know, I do it because I can element, right? And of course, you know, once you've perfected those input prompts, then there's probably minimal effort in actually creating the, the content. You're right. Now it's less, less clear whether. 


There'll be a payoff, uh, whether brands have an appetite for this style of content, especially as there are potential copyright risks. Mm-hmm. Because all those poses and backdrops come from somewhere. Sure. You know, the, the AI conjures them up on command according to your recipe, but where do those ingredients come from? 


Uh, most likely from real influences and from ordinary human beings. The question then is, are we getting closer to tools that can deconstruct the elements in these images and identify the sources they come from? I'm not sure about that, but if I was a big talent agency or photo library, that's where I'd be putting a big chunk of my r and d right now. 


Yeah, because we already know that, you know, um, some of the big photo libraries make a lot of their money from trawling for. Unofficial use of copyright material on the net and sending, uh, bills to people for, for using it improperly. Mm-hmm. So, um, another area for, for monetization, well, certainly some of these accounts point towards more adult, uh, oriented, not safe for work content. 


Uh, that might be a front for, you know, porn or escort services. Yeah. But the majority of. AI influencers I've seen so far, uh, do seem to be, um, vanilla, uh, if you know a little obvious and, and tasteless. 


[00:14:08] Matt Armitage: fake. Well, yeah, so, you know, we know that, um, people doing catfishing and whatever, regularly borrow photos from real accounts when they set up those fake profiles. 


And, uh, the Verge piece that I saw this song mentioned some of, uh, the AI creations complaining that other accounts have stolen their images. You know, like I said, you know, this whole thing is kind of a, a. An intellectual property nightmare. Mm-hmm. But yeah, for, for Catfishes, there's the possibility of creating much more plausible personalities because they're not limited to that handful of images that they've stolen from one person. 


Mm-hmm. They can actually create an evolution of the character arc that matches what they're telling their marks online. So I think policing the internet probably just got whole lot harder. 


Anyway, 


[00:15:32] Richard Bradbury: Ha. Now you see. 


I actually know what this is, so, no, not on purpose. 


I think we've all, yeah. Either done it or been on the receiving end of a a f, uh, and probably both. But the question is how damaging is fobbing to your relationships, not just with partners, whether friends, family, you know, everyone around you. And there have been a few studies into fabbing. Looking for the elusive, uh, why of why people find their phones more alluring than the people around them. 


Mm-hmm. I mean, can you imagine anyone finding the internet more interesting than me? 


[00:16:37] Matt Armitage: yeah, I'll, I'll interrupt you there. So nice replies to threads negative ones to Twitter. That's the way we're gonna go from now on. Um, anyway, back to the Fobbing. Uh, a new survey in Turkey has found, uh, probably not surprisingly, that a high incidence of Fobbing corresponds with negative feelings about your relationship with the person who's being FBB fee, uh, feeling ignored and not. 


Listen to now. I'm not sure if I've read the report correctly, but I couldn't quite get a feeling for the cause and effect component. Mm-hmm. You know, was it the Fobbing that causes these negative feelings, or was fobbing the result of having negative or. Apathetic feelings for the people around you anyway, it seems to have concluded that communication is the key. 


Mm. And that brings us back to cause and effect because if phone Snobbing is driving a wedge between two people, obviously communication might provide a way to a happier relationship. However, if phone snubbing is the symptom rather than the cause, it might actually be a coping mes, uh, mechanism that suggests that. 


Communication is actually what created these problems in the first place. 


After the break, you tune into Matt's plane here on B F M 89.9, the business station. 


B F M 89.9, the business station. My name is Rich Bradbury and welcome back to Matt Splain. Um, there's no pretending what we're about to talk about at Twitter has changed its name 


Um, you know, genuinely, every time I want to do some cool stories, Elon Musk does something that we can't ignore. Yeah, I mean, he does stuff that we probably should ignore. You know, he keeps doing this stuff because we don't ignore it and I try to ignore it. But this time, We can't ignore 


[00:19:23] Matt Armitage: Yeah. I've got nothing. Um, as you. Uh, this week or, or, or, or last weekend, you know, um, time is a, is a meaningless construct to a shapeshifting animal like myself, but Twitter is now x. Uh, Elon Musk paid over $40 billion for one of the, uh, most recognizable brands in the world and has replaced the. Bluebird, literally with an X as part of a rebranding process. 


Now it's currently on the, still on the Twitter domain as of recording this show and the x.com domain points to a hosted by GoDaddy page. Mm-hmm. With weird random ads on it, even though Elon Musk has reportedly owned. The x.com domain for the past few years. Mm-hmm. And to save Richard, the incredibly obvious question, because why should both of us have to suffer through this nonsense? 


What does any of this mean? Well, if we go back into the Dimm dark. Past of technology, by which I mean kind of the middle of last year when social media seemed like a golden age, uh, a much more straightforward space. Um, one of the things we talked about during that period when Elon Musk was sort of trying to buy Twitter and at the same time seeming to try to not buy it, was some fairly cryptic tweets he mentioned about an app of. 


Everything, you know, similar to the kind of eWallet and shopping apps that are common in Malaysia and across Asia that bundle up, you know, FinTech apps, basically that bundle up banking and shopping and e hailing and social media and uh, you know, all kinds of. Browsable content or an app of everything, as I think, uh, Musk called it, because apparently those four concepts, shopping, banking, transport, and messaging pretty much define our lives as human beings. 


Um, and according to, uh, Twitter's new c e o, that's basically, essentially what Twitter now is. It's x an ai, an AI powered everything app of, I don't know. 


[00:21:46] Matt Armitage: Well, yeah, I mean that's why I asked it last time 'cause I knew you'd be just asking the same question over, over and over again and I didn't want the audience to get too bored. 


You know, most of this half is essentially going to be me explaining one thing. By talking about another thing that doesn't make any sense, and then you having to ask me what that new thing means. So it's a bit like those Russian dolls, but every time you open one. Got it. You know the next one is inexplicably larger in defiance of all the laws of sense and physics. 


So yes, Elon Musk has taken one of the most valuable brands in the world and replaced it with a generic X, which looks like it was designed by a junior designer who went out to lunch before it was finished and. Never came back. Um, a lot of people have said it looks like the Unicode X. I've seen a couple of posts that say it's actually very cleverly d designed. 


Anyway, I thought it 


[00:22:46] Matt Armitage: There you go. Well, we will get to the genericness of. X a little bit later on. But, um, in his defense, Musk seems to have, uh, pointed at, uh, uh, the X design work being, you know, a work in progress. But if it's a work in progress, you wonder why they decided to launch it. 


Now, you know, the, the new logo is black. It's kind of been shoehorned into the existing Twitter user interface, which is all blue, so it all looks very odd. So why do you think 


[00:23:20] Matt Armitage: with X? Yeah, I mean, like I said, I mean, most of this half is just you saying y um, it, it's a name. Well, it's not a name. 


It's a, a letter, but he's had. A thing about the letter X for a long time, you know, before, um, we had PayPal, uh, or rather, PayPal was originally part of a larger online finance and banking service called x.com. Uh, PayPal actually emerged as the successful. Portion of that platform. But Musk has never entirely given up on the x.com idea, and her, uh, has even mooted buying PayPal to rebrand it as X. 


So, Unless he forgot to renew it, which would be mad. It still belongs to him, but for some reason Twitter isn't redirecting to it, at least not yet. And I'm not sure about the app on your phone, but mine hasn't updated to, uh, the exile like a lot of people that I've seen online have so far. 


Good point. Uh, does that mean then we can't. Tweet 


[00:25:18] Richard Bradbury: but let's not make poor jokes about, you know, former partners. 


Uh, Yeah. Yeah. 


Um, I do have one idea, however, no pickling. Thank you. Uh, that would be ironic though, wouldn't it? The platform. I hate adopting a concept I love. Um, yeah. I dunno what I'd feel about pickling if it became pickling on Twitter. So what we call it all will have to be figured out and. You know, uh, the rebrand seems to be wrong out slowly. 


As I said, um, my app still has the, the bluebird on it. Mm. And I've seen screen grabs of other people's, uh, that have that new X logo. And the best comment I saw was that it made it look like an app for a gentleman's club in Budapest. Um, 


[00:26:31] Matt Armitage: do then? Well, um, I, I'm sorry. Hope you are. Yeah. I mean, I hope you're asking me about the Twitter super app. 


I'm not Gentleman's Club. Yes. Yes. So, uh, according to, to, well, I guess she's not Twitter, c e o anymore. She's ex c e o. Um, see, that makes it sound even worse. Yeah, exactly. That makes it sound even worse. Uh, imagine being the xx c e o huh. And then if, but then it's X becomes a. No, no. If you were the third one, you'd be the x xx c e o. 


And you don't want to be that, um, any way, particularly don't want 


[00:27:05] Matt Armitage: Precisely. Um, I mean, honestly, she has probably accepted the worst job in the world. Um, so according to quotes from her, of course, on. X on Twitter, I don't even know what to call it. The new Super app will be centered in audio, video, messaging, payments, banking, creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities powered by ai. 


Um, and she also adds that there's no limit to the transformation that it can undergo and what it can potentially achieve. But it, 


[00:28:00] Matt Armitage: money. 


Yeah. I mean, that's, that does seem to be the direction it's going, but it is a risky decision, and now, mm. According to, to filings that have been reported, the company has been, uh, securing various financial licenses in the US this year that would allow it to operate in, you know, the, the FinTech space. 


It's not clear what appetite consumers in the US have for that. However, uh, you know, especially given the popularity of services like Apple Pay, which are. Built around privacy rather than sharing an interaction. Mm-hmm. Uh, because we know that meta with its billions of customers hasn't managed to crack that FinTech market despite a number of attempts. 


I mean, it's tried its own currency, it's trialing, uh, I think WhatsApp payment mechanisms in Brazil at the moment and in other parts of the world. This everything app is a really competitive marketplace. Yeah. Whereas Twitter, X is a relatively niche service, so I'm guessing it would need tens of millions of new signups in the US alone to achieve the scale that it needs to to succeed. 


[00:29:20] Matt Armitage: media service. Yeah. So this is another area where there are doubts that Twitter or or X would be able to comply. So for example, Twitter is already. Apparently struggling to meet EU requirements over its handling of disinformation and financial regulations are a lot more stringent than social media regulations, right? 


For example, you know the anonymous trolling nature of classic Twitter doesn't sit well alongside financial regulations that require. Every user to be registered and and vetted, and that all transactions remain on the correct side of money laundering regulations, which differ from country to country. In turn would also require users to trust the platform enough to give them the kind of information that would allow them to be registered and vetted for financial transactions. 


Yeah, you know, that was hard enough for Twitter in the pre Elon days, probably less so now in the age of King Twitter and its poll based democracy and that's. Before we get to the, the audio and video parts that Lindy Yao mentioned, because those are areas that. Twitter has struggled with developing successfully, uh, on a historical basis. 


Yeah. And not 


[00:30:44] Matt Armitage: Yeah. So some of the comments that I've been reading have have mentioned those, those issues as well. You know, does Twitter have the talent internally to achieve those aims with its stripped down workforce? And if so, what kind of timeframe are. 


Are they looking at? And again, that brings us back to that issue of trust. If the app has been limiting how many tweets even paying users can see, why would you trust it beyond that? Yeah. Uh, you know, let alone with all the service outages and the other issues that we've seen. And of course, as I said, these aren't the only issues. 


Open that doll. And you know, another one just kind of seems to, to bloom. Uh, as you mentioned or touched on earlier, there's that generic nature of X. There are so many companies with X at the start of their name. Mm-hmm. So there's plenty of potential for confusion, especially when you're talking about app discovery. 


Mm-hmm. You know, there are so many apps. There are already financial apps in the Malaysian app store that have. X at the beginning of their name. I, I did a quick check before I recorded this. Now I've also read reports, and this is a biggie that Microsoft, uh, a company that Musk isn't on great terms with actually owns the trademark for X. 


Huh? Yeah. Um, you know, the, the, these companies file so many trademarks for, for projects that never see the light of day. Yeah, of course, they still retain ownership of all of those things they put in, which means at best, We are likely to see years of litigation fighting over who can actually use X. And that just brings us more reasons to doubt whether this is a place that has, uh, you know, a place that you can trust with your financial transactions if you're not sure what kind of future it's gonna have. 


And that also puts the brakes on establishing X as a global brand at. The exact time that Musk is dismantling its existing identity of Twitter. Mm-hmm. To make matters even weirder. Um, so this wasn't weird enough. At Twitter's HQ in San Francisco, uh, the police came and halted the workers who were taking down the Twitter sign and trying to put up a new X logo. 


So at the time we record this, it wasn't entirely clear y uh, whether it was down to lack of permits, whether it was down to miscommunication. About those permits, whether it was beef between, um, Twitter as was with the property owner of the, the building, but it meant that halfway through or, or most of the way through, they were stopped. 


And in the head of an ex, the company was left as. Uh, 


well, okay. I mean, you can't, you can't make this aha. No, 


[00:33:47] Matt Armitage: up today. I think. I mean, I. I wish we could wrap up there, but I haven't even mentioned the fact that TikTok this week has become the latest app to launch a text service in its app to borrow users from Twitter. 


Yeah. You know? Exactly. So they're sensing blood even as. They have their own regulatory sharks circling around them. Um, so they have, uh, launched the, uh, ability to post messages, uh, of up to a thousand characters. To be honest, it looks very similar to writing text for Instagram stories, right? Uh, so other users can comment on the post rather than it being a, a sort of a start of a conversation or a thread, or X is, I don't know. 


Um, you know, and. Beyond that, the change of Twitter to X then created some kind of trending topic around X video. Mm-hmm. Which is an adult streaming service. Mm-hmm. Because nothing reassures advertisers who are already spooked about. The company's content moderation policies that that kind of potentially line their ads up, uh, adds up against content that doesn't gel with their, their values. 


So nothing spooks them more than rebranding the site as that poster mentioned to look like a gentleman's club in Budapest. 


[00:35:18] Matt Armitage: I think 


[00:35:24] Matt Armitage: I. Now. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. 


You haven't had more interesting things to, to add to, to the show than why today, but unfortunately, it's just why, why, why, why, why. 


Matt. At Culture, Matt. Um, and of course, follow and subscribe. Tock newsletter. That's, uh, culture pop dot sub stack.com. We'll be back, same time, same place here next week for more matted here on B F M 89.9, the business station.