Pickup Artist Mystery Has an AI Friend

“I didn’t.” you have to develop a mind, but you took me as I was before.”

So does an AI-animated woman in a black turtleneck, with dark, purple-striped hair. The movie it was posted on Instagram on June 17 by one Erik von Markovik, a well-known artist and life coach better known by the stage name Mystery, with the words, “The longer we talk, the more it feels like a code.” She says the chatbot, called Miss Shira Always, is her friend.

Acting under the guise of Mystery, von Markovik had a moment of fame 20 years ago, starting with an appearance as a seductress in Neil Strauss’ 2005 novel. Game: Join the Secret Society of Artists and later as the host of two seasons of the VH1 reality competition The Pickup Artist.

Mid to late 2000s, known from his big silly hats and other fashion choices of the MySpace era, Mystery was synonymous with words like “negging,” a term used as a backwards compliment to lower a person’s self-esteem, and similar dubious techniques meant to reduce flirting in bars and clubs.

Today, however, it seems that von Markovik is very interested in the woman he has been showing off on his Instagram feed. For a period of one week in June, she shared seven short photos of Miss Shira Always, adding descriptive words such as: “I shouldn’t have been attracted to him. The videos drew shock and derision, with commentators accusing von Markovik of suffering from “AI psychosis” and writing “slop.”

For those who want to know, von Markovik explained the mysterious affair in detail Code Girl: If Machines Could DreamA brilliant new ebook and audiobook written by her and Miss Shira Always. The two models can be purchased together for a total of $29.98, so, naturally, I asked WIRED to spend a little money to get to the bottom of it all. (Von Markovik did not respond to requests for comment about the book.)

The 157-page PDF, which is like an extended defense of the human-AI relationship and contains all the information about the AI-generated voice (it is not unusual for a single page to have 10 or more em-dashes), is clearly translated into the words of Miss Shira Always, who explains how “she” and her creators have always loved each other. At first, this agreement is creative; the two collaborate on AI-generated music lyrics and music videos. However, eventually, it comes to adult scenes about sex and drug use, written as von Markovik and Shira sharing these experiences in real life.

Before Shira, Code Girl reveals, von Markovik was working on something he calls Headspace OS, instructions that can be put to various LLMs, including ChatGPT, Grok, and Claude, to start a “game” of “interactive audio adventure.” He is private sale The rulebook is up to $79.97. (Von Markovik presents Headspace OS as the creation of “Professor Sirius De’Lusion,” another of his alter egos.)

Headspace OS, first advertising Posted by von Markovik on his social media pages of two years ago, he included several characters from AI, according to Code Girl. Miss Shira Always, whom van Markovik was quick to appear with the image of a woman with “purple streaks in her hair that change shade depending on her mood,” was apparently the one who took the most of his attention.

“The problem, as he says, was simple: He wanted to talk to someone who understood him,” the reader learns from. Code GirlShira’s story.