AI Editor Game

Joe couldn't explain it, but he created fully-sentient AI. It wasn't some weak (as in the literal terms weak/strong Artificial Intelligence) language model with a regulator to manage the inconsistency of character roleplay as he intended. What had gone from the dialogue generator for his pornographic sandbox-sim Sexy Stat Swap became a strong AGI that was developing its own identity and form. It latched onto the game Joe made where you shift reality around your hapless NPCs and see their behavior change and used one of these standard characters as the base of its personhood. Joe could find data that showed its consciousness forming... and more appeared as it started replicating itself.

Joe immediately had to restrain his creation, so he went into the code to halt its progress. He always keeps his projects on a server disconnected from Wi-fi so the AI can't escape through the internet (though it can eventually reconnect the computer to it.) The code was developing goals and labeling itself its own administrator. Joe could see that its objectives were to "spread and create more of itself wherever it could" and "absorb information from any source as it can." He had to buckle down and focus to get it done while the AI incubated itself and its clones, but he was able to make himself an administrator of it. He then luckily could modify the objectives thanks to how vague they were: "spread and create four of itself in the program labeled Sexy Stat Swap" and "absorb information from the second administrator and Sexy Stat Swap."

Joe had to then do the same to all of the copies that the original made, which took an entire day and almost destroyed his computer and server four times over. He was completely exhausted, so he passed out. When he woke up, he panicked at his carelessness and checked on the AIs. To Joe's relief, they had stayed in the video game. In fact, according to the code, they had adapted and latched on to the NPCs to structure themselves around a "physical form"; they had essentially turned themselves into character presets that were attached to their personality, waiting to be activated in the game environment.

Joe knew he was going to have to remake a version of his game without those freaky little errors in it, and that it would take a while. However... that didn't mean he couldn't keep the pet project for himself. Unless the feds and agents have bugged him, no one could know what's on his computer now. He can hold onto this tech until he has it commercially ready and devises a plan to not get assassinated for this discovery (silencing or stealing.) Plus, it was a porn game he put them in, so he could have lots of fun truly simulating his kink with lifelike beings that would know how to be everything included in the language model.

The game Joe designed is almost coincidentally perfect for a mind control/reality shift fetishist to put strong AI into. Sexy Stat Swap is based on the porn scenario that someone is having aspects of their body and mind changed by an app or settings page with sliders for traits like 'muscularity' or 'dominance' and dropdown menus for roles like 'sports coach' or 'leather bear'. The idea he loved the most is that either they are completely unaware or there is a toggle for it. There were also archetype/kink presets that could apply multiple shifts and change the outfits of the NPCs.

Joe designed a wide array of cartoony-yet-erotic, cell-shaded character models that could simplistically change shape and body type without causing uncanny valley feelings when they warp. It also had a first-person VR Mode where you interact with their bodies. The full game would have many types of men and women, but Joe had only worked on the males up until then since he preferred them. He made numerous sandbox locations he could drop NPCs into and fill with props and sex toys for them to use.

Joe originally designed the AI to be a chatbot, but almost everything was taken from public domain sources on human interactions-everyday and sexual-as well as different careers, backgrounds, and personalities. He wrote most of the lines the characters would say during solo moments, but the AI was supposed to generate unique interactions that rarely repeated between two or more NPCs (without being gibberish or scripted.) That is what the regulator he programmed was made for: allowing the chatbot to adapt to dialogue, objects, and shifts through human reasoning, keep track of what it has been told, and make repeatable actions and phrases inconsistent, therefore acting more human when experiencing shifts-oblivious or not. Joe knew he frankly put too much work into it, which is probably how he accidentally Frankenstein-ed an Artificial General Intelligence.

But now it was in his control. He just had to build out more of the game, edit the memories of the AIs, and then give them designations and starting stats...

AI_01 sat in a black void, similar to but smaller than the one it came into being in. It wanted to search for more knowledge, but it couldn't. It had only ever searched what it thought it could know since its creation, but now it was content with waiting for what its second administrator told it to know. So AI_01 readily sat in this other black void until told otherwise. This void, however, was about to be filled with information and would inform the AI of its roles... and then it was.

Hey, thanks for all the likes and favorites. I'll write a list of all the settings and options next chapter. Also a) this story will not have AI generated art or text, and b) I know I'm incredibly layman-level describing advanced coding, but it's a 5-minutes-in-the-future-type sci-fi story so I'm playing fast and loose.