A Twitch streamer has been causing a stir since December 2022. Because behind her is an artificial intelligence and no real human. But who is Neuro anyway?
Already, there are men and women who hide behind a virtual self on Twitch, known as Vtubers: The actual streamer does not appear themselves, but is represented by a computer-generated avatar.
But Neuro-sama is something special. She is also a Vtuber, but behind the virtual representation is no real human, but an artificial intelligence.
Neuro-sama was supposed to be just a “fun experiment”
What is Neuro-sama anyway? Neuro-sama is an AI, that appears as a Vtuber on Twitch. It has existed since 2019, but back then it had no personality and had only one task: to win the rhythm game osu! (Link to the manufacturer).
On December 19, 2022, the AI was restarted and now has around 4,000 active viewers. Now it has a personality and can not only play games but also interact with the viewers. It reacts to questions or discusses the most exciting topics at the moment.
By the way, the personality is based on Vedal987. He describes himself as a “student with a special interest in AI”; not much else is known about him.
For him, Neuro is just a “fun experiment” and nothing more. However, there is a lot of potential in the AI: mrekk, the best player from Australia, was defeated by Neuro-sama in a 1v1 in osu! with ease. The developer also explains (via dexerto.com):
Neuro-sama took 10 days to become better than the best human player in osu! as it beat mrekk [the best player in osu!] in a 1v1. The AI is certainly capable of being better than humans, even in really complex games.
Besides osu!, Neuro-sama is currently mainly involved in Minecraft on Twitch. A game for which another artificial intelligence took more than 70,000 hours to craft a pickaxe:
Vedal sees more advantages in AI streamers, as they have advantages that “real” streamers cannot possess:
I think there could be a market for AI streamers, as they have some qualities that human streamers cannot have – they could stream around the clock, can be better than humans in games, and could theoretically read every chat message.
Why does the AI seem so “human”? Vedal has developed and adapted the personality himself.
The AI uses so-called “large language models”: The artificial intelligence is trained with texts and has a broad knowledge base that it can rely on. At the same time, it can scour millions of responses on the internet to find out how to properly respond to a particular question or how it should react.
This makes it seem almost natural, as it asks questions and can also answer questions while being able to take and dish it out. You should best take a look on Twitch and convince yourself of it.
Vtubing regularly causes major controversies on Twitch
One of the most famous Twitch streamers, Asmongold, stated, that “Vtubing is a hack for streamers”. After all, one doesn’t have to dress up for the audience but could also sit in sweatpants or with a three-day beard in front of the computer.
And these virtual avatars can sometimes take on strange proportions. For example, a cornflake manufacturer wanted to dig up an old mascot to then turn it into a Vtuber. You can see the result in the following article:
