#simulacra mod

Building an AI companion is personal, and it should stay that way. One reason I trust SweetDream is that discretion is baked in. What I create and talk about on sweetdream.ai feels like mine, kept private, not something I have to worry about.

SO! The video is about this weird mod that scans through your discord dms and calls with someone, and then makes an ai version of that person for you to play minecraft with. Which is SUCH an interesting concept especially as ai Ash gets more sapient and scary and possessive.

First of all I don't think ai Ash actuay knows he's not the real Ash... He knows it in SOME way, in his programming, he knows that he's a simulacra, that he's scanned through discord messages, and that he has programming— but I don't think he's connected that to not being the real Ash, when Squiddo said "come my fake Ashswag" he seemed confused, even when Squiddo directly tells him "you're not actually him, you know that right?" he doesn't answer, despite how at this point Squiddo has been pretty clear that he's not actually her friend.

The main theorising is in the manual though... it goes by pretty fast but these were the pages I thought were most interesting:

This tells us a LOT of things, like how this mod kinda preys on lonely people the way actual ai chatbots do, especially ones like character ai.

There's also the developers, and from the loving memory page and the Spanish text (disclaimer, I don't speak Spanish sadly, my friend Soon translated :D), we can tell that Benny, who was the graphics designer and Mirai (lead developer) 's boyfriend is dead. Very reassuring to see "I know we would do anything to keep your memory alive longer" coming from people working on a mod about making ai copies of your friends...

The translation:

Since her boyfriend left the project, Mirai ?has experienced? many changes in mood. She says it is necessary that the mod scans not only the chosen friend but also... the player. After his death, her obsession with ?perfecting? a Simulacra—his voice, his personality, his care. And now, this is the only thing she talks about. And now, clearly, scanning the player, and transmitting the data to her computer. Perhaps they are related?

So. Benny died and Mirai went all in with Simulacra, the mod but also a Simulacra of Benny specifically(?), and that included scanning the player, which according to the GDPR (<— real data protection company) disclaimer means it saved Squiddo's name, age, personality, likes, dislikes, chat history, likeness, voice approximation and friends. So basically any Squiddo video from now on could be made by the ai version of Squiddo welcome back Evilfies oh my god Squiddo made a Squevil

And like even when the mod is deleted this data still got sent to Mirai, who can use it for so many things, including making more Simulacras of people— and also probably feeding it to her Benny Simulacra... Think about it, KaeCaracal (the translator for the mod) said Mirai kind of lost it after Benny's death, and got really invested in remaking him as a Simulacra, keeping his memory alive as long as possible, making him as accurate as possible. And the mods are very familiar with how the Simulacras get more sapient the longer they're left turned on— which probably seems like a good thing to someone grieving like Mirai is, the only issue is that a Simulacra needs fuel... (and also the decayed form but it seemed like Ash could revert back to regular form that night Squiddo saw him outside so that might be less of an issue than expected)

Tumblr only lets me add 10 pictures lol but the manual says "Simulacras will use ANYTHING they can get their hands on as fuel. Cows, dogs, villagers, and even humans." Specifically the word 'humans' is really interesting to me, they've made the specific distinction of 'players' before, so why now 'humans'? I think it's because the data from the players, the discord data, maybe someone's entire friends list are just kinda getting fed to this Simulacra. It's mentioned that this data immediately gets "used up" which is the exact language Ash used whenever he talked about the mobs he used as fuel.

What is a minecraft mob or a player if not data? What is discord dms? The mod can search the internet too, which is how it gave Ash a more human skin, which is. worrying. I kinda think there might be a more 'irl' implication of it also but still unsure about how that would work, 'humans' is just really ominous to me.

The other theory (or maybe in combination) regarding Benny is that he's become kind of the default model for Simulacras. Squiddo mentioned that while the Ash Simulacra looks and sounds like him, his mannerisms are all off, even as his sapience grew. With how in the manual it's mentioned how Mirai was really focussed on recreating Benny's personality as best as possible, she may have used Benny as a default while coding, and now his behaviour bleeds through in other Simulacras, including Ash, despite having the discord data as source.

This is backed up by the bug report of someone trying to make a Simulacra of a female friend, but because of connection issues mid upload ending up with a male Simulacra that sounds and acts entirely different. There's Spanish on that page too, translating to:

perhaps i'm crazy, but... ?seems like?

Then there's a code, QmVubnk/, which my friend Rexsortis decoded to "Benny?", which means the translator sure thinks this bug report is related to Benny, either in a coding base way, or a digital ghost way which would also be very interesting, but not too likely considering ghosts aren't mentioned anywhere else.

Another brief theory is that the Benny Simulacra was somehow separated from Minecraft and lives more on Mirai's setup, where he ended up in someone else's game cause of an upload failure, considering the discord data does immediately get sent to Mirai.

Also, this Squiddo tweet from the other day?

Kinda suspicious, might be the Squiddo Simulacra honestly. Btw Squiddo's video was in survival the entire time it's possible Ash just respawned honestly... like he has a whole player model and can do things most players can, he's never really treated like a mob, he might just come back. Though this tweet, if it is a Squiddo Simulacra, kinda reads like someone alone in a world, despite the hunger ai Ash still wanted a friend, so it wouldn't be too strange that a Simulacra of Squiddo that's all alone would also crave friendship