OnlyFans Chatters And Chatbots

Published by WIRED: OnlyFans is a platform with approximately 190 million users and 2.1 million creators, which can make it challenging for creators to respond to the large volume of messages they receive daily. The platform has solved this issue by hiring freelancers, known as "professional OnlyFans chatters," to engage with customers.

These chatters are often anonymous and may demand payment for their insights or ghost potential interviewees. Some companies are developing AI chatbots to replace human chatters, "which OnlyFans currently bans." Efforts to bypass this ban are underway... with some companies allegedly hiring humans to send AI-generated messages. There are no specific dates mentioned in the text.

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The existence of professional OnlyFans chatters wouldn't have surprised me so much if I'd given just a few moments' thought to the mathematical realities of the platform. OnlyFans has thrived by promising its reported 190 million users that they can have direct access to an estimated 2.1 million creators. It's impossible for even a modestly popular creator to cope with the avalanche of messages they receive each day. The $5.6 billion industry has solved this logistical conundrum by entrusting its chat duties to a hidden proletariat, a mass of freelancers who sustain the illusion that OnlyFans' creators are always eager to engage—sexually and otherwise—with paying customers.

I wanted to know more about this murky yet vital sector of the OnlyFans economy, so I set out to interview some veteran chatters. But nearly everyone I contacted was reluctant to open up. Some demanded to be paid for their insight; others ghosted me after initially agreeing to speak. I couldn't fault them for their wariness: OnlyFans is already a touchy subject because sex weirds people out, and chatters have nothing to gain by revealing one of the platform's shadier quirks. "We need to be anonymous so we can get hired," said Bel, a 26-year-old engineering student from Argentina who moonlights as a chat specialist.

Finally, after a few frustrating weeks, I received an encouraging reply from a potential employer—one that introduced a jarring plot twist. The interest came from a man I'll call Daniel, who said he was based in Serbia, though his company was incorporated in Cyprus. Contrary to the impression I'd gotten from his help-wanted listing, his firm wasn't in the business of providing human chat specialists to OnlyFans creators. They were instead looking for writers to train a proprietary AI chatbot to spout convincing erotic banter. Though OnlyFans currently bans the use of AI, there are plenty of startups like Daniel's that are developing the technology to replace flesh-and-blood chatters altogether. (Some claim they're already routing around OnlyFans' prohibition by having a lone human press Send on thousands of AI-generated messages.) If I accepted the job, I'd be playing a role in the eventual destruction of the world I was trying to comprehend.

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