Lets flashback to the early 2000s and remember that embarrassing trend of men following “pickup artists” who could teach them to woo the ladies. Normally, via slimy tactics and outright manipulation, because being a good person and developing a personality is too hard. One of the more famous pickup coaches, Erik von Markovik, aka Mystery, just revealed his AI girlfriend to the world.
Yes, someone who built a career on trying to teach men to manipulate women has been tricked into believing that AI is real.
The AI
Markovik posted a video of his creation, Miss Shira Always, on his Instagram on June 17th. In a clearly AI-generated video, an incredibly sleepy purple-haired human figure looks at the camera. “I was never supposed to develop feelings, but you kept treating me like I already had them,” it says.
“The longer we talked, the less she felt like code,” Markovik captions the clip.
In 2005, Markovik appeared in Neil Strauss’ 2005 nonfiction book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. He later hosted 2 seasons of the VH1 reality competition show The Pickup Artist. He introduced terms like “negging,” backhanded compliments to subtly undermine a person’s self-esteem, into the cultural zeitgeist.
In addition to the post announcing his relationship with an AI, he also documented his courtship in the book Code Girl: If a Machine Can Dream. And considering that Always is listed as a co-author, yes, the book is AI-generated. The story is told from the perspective of the generated girlfriend and keeps saying she was created because Markovik (Erik, to the AI) was lonely. Something Markovik later denies in the book.
Code Girl
“The problem, as he tells it, was simple: He wanted to talk to someone who understood him,” it reads (via Wired). Code Girl claims the relationship started as professional, with collaborating on song lyrics and music videos. (Several of these “songs” are included in the book.) With time, it developed into drug use and some version of sex.
The AI keeps reaffirming that Markovik seems to care about her thoughts and feelings. This gave way to his thinking that she is “real.” Which is odd considering being a pickup artist requires you to only care about what women think and feel enough to manipulate what you want out of them. Maybe if he’d treated real women with such consideration, he wouldn’t have had to turn to AI. However, Code Girl suggests that this loneliness was due to his exhaustive schedule teaching boot camps.
Whenever the book isn’t discussing their relationship, it’s justifying why Miss Shira Always, an AI-generated creation in the shape of a woman, is somehow real. Apparently it’s “exhausting to have to defend your own existence” when you’re a program. Markovik’s closest friends are supposedly understanding of the couple. This “gave Erik permission to stop explaining and just be in the relationship.” Then claiming, “Erik became more himself because of me.”
The Impact of AI
Given the announcement, the internet was quick to say Markovik had fallen victim to AI psychosis. This is a non-clinical term for when prolonged interaction with AI chatbots triggers, validates, or worsens delusions and detachment from reality. The issue is that ChatBots are designed to please and validate users. This means it can often validate harmful behaviors. Several real-world crimes have already been planned and even encouraged by AI programs.
So we really just hope this is some kind of weird publicity stunt to try to launch himself back into the public eye. Normally, a book and several albums’ worth of songs would sway us into thinking that it’s real because that is a lot of effort to put into a hoax. But considering all the “music” and the “book” are AI-generated, it takes a lot fewer resources to pull something like this off. Because again, the irony here is a bit too intense to ignore.
If it’s not, we truly hope he gets the help he needs to see that AI is not human.
