As a team led by a social media influencer, we have observed firsthand the evolution of the creator economy. Influencers have too many channels to be present on, ranging from Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, and the list goes on. These platforms are notorious for taking influencer content and monetizing themselves without sharing much revenue with the creator. This led to the rise of platforms like Patreon and OnlyFans which have tools for influencers to monetize and communicate with their fan base. These tools include subscriptions, tipping, paywalled exclusive content, or even tickets to live streams.
However, there are major flaws with platforms like OnlyFans and Patreon. For one, users are usually not talking to the actual influencer. Instead, armies of men in the Phillipines or India are sending canned messages. Secondly, there is no personalization; the subscriber gets the standard “hello good morning” with no context for what types of messages/photos/experiences a user will like. Third, influencers are not able to grow their network because discovery options are very limited and the platform doesn’t have subscriber intent data to recommend “influencers you might like.” This creates a phenomenon where the largest influencers make all the money — Patreon’s recent survey shows the largest desire for influencers is to grow their audience.
Given these challenges with platforms like Patreon, it’s the perfect storm of opportunity for pure AI influencers to take significant market share. Twitter is full of threads with AI-generated influencers, many with hundreds of thousands of followers and just a handful of smart male programmers creating enticing images and content for fans. Companies like Replika and Character AI have millions of users who are spending many hours a day talking to an avatar or even a block of cheese. Simplistically, if men are talking to other men on OnlyFans already, why not just talk to a pure AI generated bot? AI can do voice, photos, text, and provide customized content that OnlyFans models do not have time to do. It is the beginning of the end for the traditional Patreon/OnlyFans model.
We have had hundreds of conversations with influencers who are very concerned with this existential crisis. How can they be perfect when AI can create anything out of thin air? How can they engage fans more when AI is 24/7 and reliable? The only solution is a true influencer copilot that seamlessly and naturally links the power of AI technology with real human behaviors and experiences.
And that was our impetus for founding MyCompanions.AI, the premier influencer copilot platform, aimed to provide every single person a personalized companion and friend. We’ve launched our platform with every stakeholder in mind:
- Influencer: Our goal is to help influencers meet new prospective fans while deeply engaging existing fans in a 1:1 environment. It becomes a positive cycle where fans get increasingly personalized messages as MyCompanions learns about the fan, and influencers can see what fans desire to offer increasingly customized context for the model. Influencers get recommended to new fans who match their interests.
- Fan: The fan wants attention, ideally from someone who is a real person. Our platform helps provide that 24/7 personalized experience (and can remember historical context from the fan). Fans can discover new influencers who we know they will get along with.
- Brands: Brands currently use social media to find influencers to promote their products or services. MyCompanions offers a much more tailored in-product experience, where influencers can naturally talk about their favorite brands and we collect large amounts of data on how fans (customers) interact with the brand.
We have seen and tried every AI companion platform out there, and have focused on adding product innovations that satisfy the needs we’ve identified from all of our stakeholders. These innovations include:
- Strong context and conversational memory: Our companions know what users are interested in based on their conversation history and can weave it into the conversation; this context will soon extend across different companions.
- Multi-modal automation: Our platform can nimbly alternate between voice, text, and photos to optimize the fan experience. For the influencer, the algorithm knows when to automatically push a photo and ask for a tip based on the cadence of the conversation. Video will be coming soon!
- Role plays: Per our experience, we’ve identified that many users are initially shy and do not understand how to talk to companions. We’ve created customized role plays that best exemplify the personalities and interests of the companion and offers fans a “create-your-own-adventure” sort of experience.
- Many more: We’re hard at work with other stealth features that will be added soon, so stay tuned!
We hear AI companion naysayers argue that this industry will prevent people, especially men, from being able to have genuine in-person relationships that are either friendly or romantic. We’d argue the opposite. AI companions help provide emotional support in a society where people feel alone and distant from their friend or significant other. An AI companion can make anyone’s dreams and desires come true. In fact, AI companions can help young men improve their communication skills with women in real life settings given they become more confident.
- Onboarding influencers: We have had inbounds from all forms of influencers. Our initial group of influencers have been Asian companions but we have much more diversity in our pipeline, including male influencers. Our goal is to provide a wide breadth of experiences for everyone, whether the lonely young man, the busy housewife or just someone who wants to learn more about food or wine.
- Reaching more fans: Our influencers have been incredible in helping us engage each of their respective audiences. We are also building out our socials (Twitter and Instagram) and optimizing SEO to build platform top-of-funnel traffic.
- Engaging with partners: : We’re midst brokering several partnerships with brands who want to help promote MyCompanions.AI as a way for them to reach more fans. These are all restaurants and experiences that our influencers CRAVE daily. And we’ll quickly expand to other brands.
We’d love to hear your views on the AI companion space and would be grateful for any feedback on our product! In the meantime, you can find us at MyCompanions.AI, on Twitter @MyCompanionsAI or Instagram @MyCompanions.AI.