Neuro-sama is the most subscribed user on the streaming platform Twitch, where people stream themselves playing, talking, creating, or just hanging out while the audience watches, comments, and interacts live. But Neuro-sama is not a person. It is a character powered by artificial intelligence, capable of generating comments in real time, responding to chat and obtaining important viewing numbers.
We're seeing a lot more AI-generated personalities like this online. Definitions are confusing because not everyone does the same thing and the public doesn't respond to them for the same reasons. For the sake of simplicity, let's call them AI characters.
After almost a year covering AI, I'm skeptical of the idea that interest in AI characters automatically means we all accept them. Based on my reporting, interviews, and time spent observing how people actually interact with these systems, I think something else is going on.
Novelty and the 'new toy' effect
Most new technologies go through a kind of show phase. Think bold displays, impressive firsts and wow moments. AI characters are no exception, particularly those that look and behave in convincingly human ways.
So I think a lot of what's happening here is just novelty. Many people are neither committed AI enthusiasts nor die-hard skeptics. They are simply curious. Engagement increases when people encounter something new and then decreases once it becomes familiar.
That's why AI streamers can function less like artists that people invest in and more like experiments that people check out. Neuro-sama is a good example. It's not just a generic chatbot included in Twitch. He is an idiosyncratic character carefully developed over years by his creator, vedal987. As TechRadar's Eric Hal Schwartz noted when we covered Neuro-sama earlier this year: “Neuro-sama is the product of years of development. He's a specific, idiosyncratic character. A generic chatbot on Twitch would have no way to replicate that success.”
That level of craftsmanship makes it interesting. It's novel, technically impressive and unusual enough to attract attention, even from people who have no interest in replacing human streamers with AI ones.
But the novelty is only part of the story. Some viewers tune into AI character chats or follow AI influencers to spot the cracks, see the slightly off-kilter responses, the strange pacing, and the moments where the illusion fades.
This echoes what roboticist Masahiro Mori described as the uncanny valley: when something is almost but not quite human, it attracts attention precisely because it feels wrong.
Many AI characters sit in that middle zone. They behave human enough to intrigue us, but not convincing enough to sustain emotional investment. Once you get the hang of it, yes, you can chat; yes, you can transmit; Yes, it seems realistic: there is little left to discover. And as more AI characters enter the same spaces, that sense of newness or morbid curiosity is likely to fade even faster.
Why humans still have the advantage
A high number of views generates good headlines, but is a poor indicator of long-term interest. This is because we know that people click on unusual things, algorithms amplify novelty, and metrics routinely confuse curiosity with something deeper. That's why you might have liked a raccoon video once and then all you watch for a week are raccoon videos.
When we do the same and assume that opinions equal desire, we run the risk of confusing short-term spectacle with long-term cultural preference.
The philosopher Jean Baudrillard warned about this decades ago in Drills and Simulationarguing that simulation produces “a real without origin or reality.” Replicas can attract attention and at the same time drain meaning. AI characters simulate performance, but without lived context. You can keep an eye on them, but it's harder to worry about them.
Human creators, especially on platforms like Twitch, remain attractive for more complicated reasons. They contradict each other, they get bored, they tell stories, they make mistakes and they show us their humanity. Sure, we can't say the same for all online personalities, but many of us maintain a connection with other humans online. because They are human.
One reason is that audiences' relationships with creators are often parasocial. Media scholars Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl used this term to describe the one-sided bonds that audiences form with artists over time. These bonds depend on perceived memory, growth, vulnerability and spontaneity, qualities that are difficult to fake.
The uncomfortable reality
Of course, this is subjective. Reporting on AI therapy and AI relationships over the past year, I've spoken to people who actively prefer interaction with AI precisely because eliminates humanity, clutter and friction.
There is no social obligation, no reciprocity, no emotional risk. AI characters fit that logic perfectly. It's easy to dive into them and abandon them.
We still don't know how people will relate to these types of AI characters in the long term, especially as distinguishing between what is human and what is not becomes more difficult. But for now, it's worth resisting the temptation to preferentially consider the AI spectacle. Sometimes a crowd that leans in doesn't mean it wants to stay. He just wants to see how the trick works.
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