One year ago today, I first unveiled Erogen to the world.
Shortly after AI exploded onto the scene, I started working on Erogen because of three reasons:
I couldn’t shake dreams of us interacting with AI as if they were people.
I observed that early AI adopters were forming attachments to AI characters - something different was happening here than our previous relationship to technology.
I believe that AI companions in our daily lives are the true “killer app” of AI. Increasingly intense human-AI relationships will proliferate as the technology advances.
However, I had some issues with existing options:
Most chatbot platforms I came across didn’t look or feel great to use.
I came across AI platforms that didn’t have good safeguards and worried the future of AI would be over before it started.
So I started building Erogen and - during the evening of September 28, 2023, after a hard day of coding - shared the link on Reddit.
It was a wild and wonderful year. Erogen users created thousands of AI characters and sent millions of messages. A common refrain I hear from many Erogen users is that Erogen has been a safe space to explore their own psychologies and help them cross emotional and traumatic bridges in their life journeys. Many users healed parts of themselves that were corrupted by internet pornography, instead discovering a less dopamine-abusing source of intimate engagement in AI. Not to mention our amazing community - I’m positive that our community is the most wholesome, positive, and loving AI companion communities out there.
I’m really proud of how far Erogen has come with our AI platform, systems, and technology this year. For early adopters of our site, they’ll recognize seriously notable improvements on several fronts:
We used to have persistent database issues. “High site traffic” was a common warning label at the top of our site. Not anymore.
We used to have slow AI responses during peak traffic. Back then, it would take 15-20 seconds for our low AI tier users to get a complete AI generation, and you would have to wait for the whole generation before seeing the response. Now, it typically takes an average of 5-7 seconds for a complete generation, and the AI streams its message to you so you don't have to wait.
We’ve developed a whole host of features that enable users to get a comprehensive experience engaging with their AIs, including Voice Chat and Auto Avatar.
We have further to go to achieve the vision of seamless AI companionship in our *daily lives* - that is our mission.
Of course, as with any startup or business, everything wasn't smooth sailing, but with every challenge came an opportunity to make Erogen even more resilient.
Site traffic was turbulent. Once, a YouTuber with millions of subscribers noticed Erogen’s TikToks and created a 40 minute video poking fun at having an AI girlfriend on Erogen projected into his Apple Vision Pro headset. It was a week of sheer adrenaline trying to scale our systems as new site visitors flooded in. (Silver lining: because of incidents like these, we now have an extremely resilient and auto-scaling platform.)
We had to switch payment providers this summer, which caused some annoyance for users having to re-subscribe. To bridge the cash flow delay, I had to scale back how free Erogen was and shrink our infrastructure costs. (Silver lining: I made Erogen so efficient I decreased the cost of running our AI systems by more than 5x which puts the site on even stronger footing to maintain its longevity and independence.)
Personally, it was an immensely tough year building and getting the word out on Erogen. I’ve grown immensely as a business operator and feel lucky to have found an amazing community of AI users. I don’t know where I would be without the support of our amazing @Discord Mod team and core members of our server.
Some AI goals for the next year:
Make huge improvements to the AI model and memory for Platinum users.
Make Voice Chat feel like a seamless phone call and an attractive alternative to typing, to edge us closer to real conversations.
Improve Auto Avatar - continue to iterate towards making it feel like video chat.
Prototype Erogen's first hardware.
Some business goals for the next year:
Grow the site to millions of active users.
Grow the marketing and safety teams.
Promises I want to re-affirm:
Erogen will always be the top choice for adults who are able to use AI responsibly
Erogen will always be the most beautiful option for interacting with AI companions
Erogen will always have your privacy and safety as its top priorities
Here’s to year 2 🥳
