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Is a generative AI platform the place customers can create their very own text-based chatbots and “AI girlfriends” price greater than $16 million? Buyers in MyShell appear to suppose so, as the corporate simply introduced a $11 million pre-series A spherical from Dragonfly, Delphi Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Maven11 Capital, Nascent, Nomad Capital, OKX Ventures, following its $5.6 million pre-seed last year, bringing its complete fundraise to $16.6 million to this point.
With creators in Singapore and Tokyo, MyShell emerged from stealth final 12 months, and is probably greatest identified for its AI character and user-generated bot creation platform in addition to its open-source voice cloning model OpenVoice, unveiled at the start of 2024. The platform is accessible on the net although customers may also work together with MyShell’s chatbots on Discord and Telegram.
Customers can select to talk in textual content, audio, and even animated video with bots created by MyShell’s builders, or by different customers, or to make their very own bot and select the underlying AI mannequin that powers its interactions.
In a video name interview with VentureBeat, MyShell CEO and co-founder Ethan Solar mentioned, “the concept of beginning MyShell is that we wish to actually push ahead the open developments on varied AI basis fashions.”
Proper now, MyShell helps integration with OpenAI’s GPT-3.5/4 by its API (so the person doesn’t pay OpenAI, MyShell does) and its own MyShell LLM or “ShellLLM,” which the corporate says was educated utilizing “large non-public knowledge from novel, motion pictures, anime and TV exhibits to make the roleplay expertise extra human like.”
In a manner, MyShell is just like Character AI and even OpenAI’s GPT Builder and GPT Store, offering a simple pure language path to constructing AI chatbots with distinctive and distinct “personalities,” identities, response types, and topics of experience, in addition to a manner for chatbot makers to share their chatbots with the world, and customers to entry and work together with them.
A crypto play below the hood
In contrast to different AI bot creation platforms, MyShell additionally points its personal blockchain-based cryptocurrencies that customers can purchase: the Shell Coin and $SHELL token for which it may be exchanged, each of which the platform will in the end settle for as a solution to entry premium options and reward the creators of its user-generated AI bots.
To create a bot or AI character on MyShell, you join the platform at https://app.myshell.ai/ and click on the “Workshop” tab and observe the directions, filling out varieties and fields to make your customized AI-powered chatbot. MyShell provides its tokens as rewards to incentivize extra creators of latest chatbots,.
Solar mentioned that MyShell may also supply its personal type of incentives to creators whose bots obtain essentially the most engagement within the type of further tokens — taking a web page out of OpenAI’s GPT Retailer, which additionally promised a revenue sharing program for builders of custom GPTs within the first quarter of this 12 months, however which has but to ship on that plan.
MyShell plans to generate income from three primary sources: charging creators actual, fiat foreign money for selling their MyShell-made chatbots on its major touchdown pages; charging subscriptions to customers for heavy utilization; and charging charges to customers who want to make investments their very own tokens in in style AI chatbots.
AI girlfriends, copyrighted characters, and productiveness apps
To this point, the corporate has promoted the creation of “AI girlfriends” and even hosts many user-generated chatbots primarily based on copyrighted popular culture characters corresponding to Walter White from Breaking Dangerous and Rick Sanchez from Rick & Morty that may chat with customers in textual content, animated video, and voice.
In reality, the primary MyShell AI chatbot made by the corporate’s founders was referred to as “Samantha,” designed for the chat software Telegram, and which MyShell says is “paying tribute to the AI assistant Samantha from the 2013 film Her.”
Requested about its concentrate on AI girlfriends or companions and the truth that such a promotion might learn to many customers as sexist or dehumanizing, Solar advised VentureBeat that “character is only one subset of all of the generic AI functions” that customers can entry and construct, and famous that the corporate provides NSFW toggles to customers to permit what content material they really feel snug interacting with on the platform.
On its internet app, MyShell additionally highlights user-generated chatbots for translation, psychotherapy, emblem design, resume critiquing and writing, coding, fortune telling and tarot studying, and plenty of extra.
Already, MyShell counts greater than one million registered customers and 50,000 “creators” — individuals who construct AI bots with its platform.
With the brand new funding spherical, the corporate intends to “add sources into the event of its open-source foundational mannequin; empower AI creators; foster a very democratic AI creator platform; and additional help the open-source group,” based on a press launch despatched to VentureBeat below embargo.
