Regarding the new policy update, I only have one word to say:

Bruh.

But for the sake of clarity, I shall explain my position further (I'm a verbose mf, I know):

JanitorAI stood out from the competition by managing to inch that fine line between allowing despicable content and being puritanical. Although I did not agree with the guidelines all the time (the "realistic AI generated image depicting nudity" part affected some of my early bots) but that was fine - I could see why that would be an issue, namely through the usage of Deepfakes.

This update, on the other hand, seems to be very misguided. Explicit material on a site like this is expected - it's why this site gained popularity after OpenAI's ban on explicit content and other chat sites following suit. There was a niche that JanitorAI filled, and now it seems to be heading in a way that's no longer in line with that.

Perhaps it's a marketing decision to bring in sponsor or advertisers - which I would understand. Creating an LLM is no small feat, hosting it is undoubtedly costly in the long run, and I applaud Shep for managing it. Maybe there's another reason for it and there are indeed lots of nefarious bots that the moderation team had to delete - in which case, I applaud them for their work as well, as I rarely encountered such bots while browsing.

For me, creating bots was an exercise in creativity. I don't usually write smut, so creating characters and interacting with them more or less focused on that was a good way to get out of my comfort zone a bit.

With my other responsibilities looming over me and the direction this site is headed in, I think I may have to say goodbye. I will not delete my account and the bots will remain public for anyone to enjoy until moderation deems otherwise.