The Emotional Labor Behind AI Intimacy (2025) [pdf]

(data-workers.org)

44 points | by beepbooptheory 5 hours ago ago

15 comments

  • klueinc an hour ago

    Appaled at the lack of empathy for labellers from other comments here.

    • Beestie 44 minutes ago

      I read the 404 article and its nauseating - the story of the young man from Africa is very unpleasant. We all know the pr0n industry is a thing but this is off the rails.

    • guitarlimeo 31 minutes ago

      Yeah same. Anything seems to go if it means the next version of $HOT_LLM_MODEL is improved.

  • d0able 43 minutes ago

    Would have liked to see a clearer call for action other than "regulation" - what exactly would the author want to regulate and what are the downstream effects?

  • mbrumlow 2 hours ago

    > he started his second job as the human labor behind AI sex bots

    This makes no sense. AI sex bots don’t need humans texting and role playing.

    I don’t think whoever wrote this article understands what AI is.

    Note the fist job of describing what was in the video seems like somebody building a AI dataset.

    • 3rodents an hour ago

      “Actually Indians” is a meme for a reason

      https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2025/the-company-whose--ai--wa... The company whose ‘AI’ was actually 700 humans in India

      https://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-just-walk-out-actual... Amazon's Just Walk Out technology relies on hundreds of workers in India watching you shop

      https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/former-nate-ceo-human-worke... Former nate CEO who used human workers instead of AI allegedly defrauded investors lured by new tech of millions

    • kristopolous 2 hours ago

      Jason certainly does [1]. The commercial bots seamlessly traverse between AI, auto-respond and human.

      It's very much an ensemble method. That's why people pay for it over just downloading an abliterated model from hf with system prompt hacking. Go and try it, the SOTA of role-playing models still have a lot to be desired

      [1] https://computerhistory.org/profile/jason-koebler/

      • Ukv an hour ago

        > The commercial bots seamlessly traverse between AI, auto-respond and human. It's very much an ensemble method.

        This seems unlikely to me, given it'd increase costs and the response times would make it obvious.

        The messages presented in the original source appear to be people expecting to be talking to a real person, likely on a dating app. The relation to AI is only speculative, and mostly in the direction of "my messages may be used to train a chatbot to replace my job of deceiving people" - which is plausible.

        > That's why people pay for it over just downloading an abliterated model from hf with system prompt hacking.

        I'd assume convenience, fine-tuning, and using a larger model than it's feasible for most people to run locally.

    • dang 2 hours ago

      (We've since changed the URL from https://www.404media.co/ai-is-african-intelligence-the-worke... to the essay it references, which was written by Michael Geoffrey Asia himself and goes much deeper into the topic. I've put a reference to the profile article in the toptext.)

    • heraldgeezer 2 hours ago

      Yea, sounds like a typical media piece to evoke emotion. "oh no the poor africans"

      What is an "AI sex bot" ?

      Because ChatGTP, Claude, Gemini, Grock and Mistral can all ERP...

      • tartuffe78 2 hours ago

        You must not see Facebook ads. Every other one is for an "AI Girlfriend" no matter how many I hide.

        • antonvs 30 minutes ago

          You’re being targeted, presumably based on your traffic profile. Unless you’re talking about ads actually on Facebook, in which case your problem is that you’re using Facebook.

          • tartuffe78 a few seconds ago

            Yea I use facebook marketplace to sell stuf

        • heraldgeezer an hour ago

          Correct. Never on Facebook, don't have the app. On a browser I always use AdBlock.

  • renewiltord an hour ago

    Phone sex line guy upset he had to do phone sex. What.