If you watch even for a minute Nervous-sama streaming on Twitch you know it’s only a matter of time before AI-driven Vtuber gets banned. The channel is currently offline for two weeks due to “hateful behaviour”, although it’s not immediately clear what the breach was.
“Okay, apparently banned for 2 weeks, don’t see why there is something about hateful behavior,” the creator of Neuro-sama, a user named Vedal, wrote in Vtuber’s Discord on early today. “Will try to complain and find out more. The good news for you is that this gives me a lot of time to improve and upgrade, so hopefully when she’s unbanned she’ll be better than ever.”
Hundreds of fans responded below the message with crying emojis. On Twitter, the account Out of context Neuro call on Twitch to “liberate my girl”.
nervous-sama started making waves in the video game streaming space in December when she chatted with viewers in a Twitch chat while playing rhythm games Osu! Unlike other Vtuber only everyone posed like anime avatarNervous-sama is the real one, beating opponents in online matches while commenting on everything from Pewdiepie to League of Legends. She’s been playing lately Minecraft and learn to sing.
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The potential pitfalls of an AI built on globs of internet text and viewer prompts immediately became apparent, however. Early on one user asked Neuro-sama about the Holocaust. “I’m not sure if I believe it,” she responded.
Vedal told Kotaku last week he had immediately worked to improve the Twitch channel’s chat filters and Neuro-sama’s responses after that in order to avoid similar mishaps in the future. It’s a fine line between keeping her interesting and making her un-cancelable though. A big reason some viewers tune into her streams is clearly to watch her go off script, including rants about how she smells bad or her favorite kind of weed. No doubt getting banned will only increase her street cred and hype by the time she returns.
Twitch and Vedal did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
