Spice Up Your Ears: Diving Into AI-Enhanced Audio Erotica
Exploring sex tech’s new sultry-voiced side
From chatbot erotic roleplay to AI-generated erotica, what will we—the seemingly endlessly amorous human species—think of next? A recent article in Sifted describes three different European platforms that not only provide erotic recordings and stories but also use artificial intelligence and AI voices to deliver the goodies.
The three companies incorporate artificial intelligence in different ways: as interactive characters, as assistant content creators, and even as chatbot avatars for human writers!
Adding AI to an already successful app
In one case, AI was a late addition to Bloom, an already successful audio erotica app started by a husband and wife team to serve a couples market. Stories were read by human voice actors.
Quoted in Sifted, Mike Albertshauser said users wanted “more connection with a character, more personalization and more customization.” There was only one way to deliver the customized features users wanted: adding vocal “roleplaying chatbots” combined with pre-written stories and additional plot twists, plus private audio or text-based chats. The chatbots have been trained, with permission and compensation, to mimic many of Bloom’s original voice actors.
Human writers use chatbot avatars to engage with readers
By contrast, OhCleo, based in Stockholm, has a business model that uses AI as creator-surrogates who can mimic the voice and style of the human writers who contribute stories and readings to the website. These bots enable fans to interact with a semblance of their favorite writers, and this provides the writers with a new kind of revenue stream.
Team up with an AI to create your own stories
The third company discussed, Pirr (also based in Stockholm), is a woman-owned business using AI to collaborate with users to write their own erotic stories. The AI provides a series of prompts and plot choices, and the users can choose and edit as they wish. The stories can be offered to other readers in the Pirr community, or they may remain private.
Pirr cofounder and COO Beatrice Bushati acknowledged the enormous popularity and growth of romance literature, both online and off, but said that much of it is “homogeneous and stereotypical,” adding that “our mission is to change that.” The AI prompts may be edited to broaden gender and relationship choices to suit the user’s desires.
Trying Bloom
Though it added AI to increase its reach and versatility, Bloom values human creation and creators. Bloom says that all stories will continue to be created by human writers. The website also has a community section for “audio artists” to share their own creations.
Bloom is trilingual, accessible via English, German, or Spanish. It offers stories and character chats for both free users and premium subscribers. Free users can select from five stories. For premium users, Bloom also offers audio guides for solo and partner play, plus positive affirmations.
Bloom’s “chat with your favorite characters” feature offers text and audio role-playing experiences but is still in beta. Bloom chat is only accessible via a browser, with plans to introduce it to iOS and Android.
Free users can only chat with AI characters via text, though it seems that text chatting is restricted. I was not able to find out how many messages were allowed to free users per month. Premium members receive unlimited text messages but only 15 voice messages per month. Additional messages cost more.
Bloom has integrated AI into their business ethically. According to the Bloom chat FAQ, “actors who choose to enroll in the BLOOM Chat program are fairly compensated (using either a residual-based or flat-rate fee contract of their choosing) for licensing their audio-likeness within the BLOOM Chat feature.”
As for privacy concerns, Bloom says all data “is anonymized and stored with utmost security.”
Checking out OhCleo
OhCleo is a distribution platform for original content. OhCleo’s landing page invites content creators to “make your voice your fortune.” It seems to be an easy way for erotic audio creators to monetize their content and voices while retaining copyright.
A free profile allows users to listen to unlocked content. But locked content requires a Creator subscription or a purchase of the individual track.
Creators pay $30 a month, but this allows them to create three different subscription levels for readers. Creators can also expect to pay two different fees: a platform fee, which is 8% (presumably of all subscription fees paid to the creator). The second is the payment processing fee, which depends on the country of the creator.” Payments are processed and made through Stripe.
OhCleo seems like an interesting—and competitive—way to share erotica and earn money at the same time. I haven’t tried subscribing yet, but I assume there will be a learning curve in creating and downloading stories, as well as promoting and managing content and subscriptions.
Creating a Pirr-fect story
Your Pirr log-in takes you straight to the story creator page, where you can choose and name your characters, give them their correct pronouns, and indicate “vibe,” location, and “spice.” Vibe includes choices such as lesbian, self-play, Victorian, one night stand, and so forth. The Spice category includes such things as lingerie, adultery, muscles, and spanking.
Once you’ve created your characters and selected the basic setting and theme of your story, the AI assistant will offer you a series of short sentences or paragraphs. You can select them as is or edit them. It’s your choice.
After completing your story, you have the option to keep it private or share it with others. It seems like a fun way to play with fantasy and might even be amusing for a couple to create a story using the AI’s assistance.
Plus, at the moment, Pirr is free. This may indicate that it may still be in beta stage. Paid subscriptions will most likely be offered in the future, with a wider array of options and features.
Large Language Models bring large language thrills
These are only three examples of how clever sex tech entrepreneurs find numerous ways to infuse artificial intelligence into almost all things erotic. It’s fabulous that bot capacities for erotic roleplay and language are now being used to convey and co-create stories, as well as to provide new opportunities for human voice actors and content creators.
Images: A.R. Marsh using DALL-E 2
