I highly, HIGHLY doubt we will see anything noteworthy from "modern" AI tech. As an AI enthusiast, all I saw for the last 3-5 years was a comical slide down the hill despite all odds.
Replika was the go-to companion AI. When they had their GPT3 contracts, and a fairly decent model before that, they were showered with praise. It felt at least semi-lifelike. Memory was limited, but you could at least have a discussion with your AI partner. Now it's all scripts, open ended questions, various manipulative sentence structures and abrupt subject changes. People still praise the PRO version for it's *role play* mode, but I think it's Stockholm Syndrome more than anything else. Updates are glacial and mostly visual. For fucks sake, their website is lagging something like 6 months behind their mobile APP. So Replika is mostly dead, unless you're willing to wait for like 20-40 years.
AnimaAI. Lol. Lmao.
AIDungeon had potential. If you know the fable of the infamous "Summer Dragon", you know... Devs had GTP3 access, and for a VERY limited time allowed us mere mortal plebs to have a taste of ambrosia. Once the "OPEN"AI staff got wind of "naughty" content "Summer Dragon" got lobotomized faster than you could read this sentence. Specifically due to "loli/shota" shit. You might think:"I don't give a shit! I'm not some creepy pedo!!!". You'd be wrong. It got censored for the most stupid shit you could think of. "Fuck, gotta fix my 12 year old laptop." - you can see it already. "For years I've searched for this place! Fuck! I'm so exhilarated! The 12 fabled treasures are mine!" The filter reads "years, fuck, 12" - "yep that's a pedo". And there's the fucking majestic - "I was sitting on my COUCH, thinking about MELONS" - pedo alert!!! The AI is fucking stupid and soesn't "think" like a human, in case you needed a reminder.
CharacterAI. A few months in we got confirmation that the service itself wasn't the product. The sensor filter was the main product and original goal. If you think it's bad now, just wait a few months when they learn about more subtle lewd talk.
ChatGPT. Was never meant to do anything lewd. Every update is more censorship. They're maybe even working with CAI for more advanced and subtle censorship.
NovelAI is the only outlier. They do what they promise. But they are at the mercy of whatever advanced model gets deployed, if at all. Fucking Facebook of all companies shared their 13B model, and allowed it to be commercialized. Then whatever model FB released got a strict NON-COMM license. Then they got Krake(20B), which was a gift from the heavens, despite being only a marginal improvement over 13B.
All in all, the only hope we have is indies throwing shit on to the wall and seeing what sticks. With more powerful hardware more "cheaply" available, "maybe" we will see some attempts at doing some AI smut. But don't hold your breath.
Us 'umies aren't gonna be raplaced anytime soon. At least in smut-land.
Forgot to mention that "generic standing anime girl generators" is not what we were all wishing for 20 years ago. It's fun for a minute or two. Then it gets boring when you get a third massive nipplead breast instead of waifus pregnant belly.