Have you ever wished you could have a real-life conversation with a hentai model?
As AI evolves, it’s becoming easier to do just that, with an entire subculture of virtual camgirls, or ‘LewdTubers’, to fulfil your wildest fapping fantasies.
They’re real people, with animated avatars – and that can mean kitty ears, tails and impossible body shapes, but a real person’s voice and physical movements. Ever heard of ProjektMelody?
I took a deep dive in to the LewdTubing community to find some of the top stars of this subgenre of webcamming, and to see exactly how they’re drawing in the punters.
What’s Behind The LewdTubing Craze?
To understand LewdTubers, you need to go back to the early 2010s and the birth of VTubers, short for ‘virtual YouTuber’.
VTubers were (and still are) YouTube channels that feature animated characters, usually in a Japanese/anime style.
In most cases, the animation is created using motion capture – so there is a real human in front of a camera, somewhere in the world.
By 2020, VTubers had become an established part of the YouTuber community, and nearly half of people surveyed by YouTube said they would be open to watching content by a virtual or fictional creator.
As you might expect, this technology eventually found its way onto live webcam sites, and in the early 2020s, LewdTubers were born.
Like the name suggests, LewdTubers are VTubers who create lewd content (e.g. by using a topless or nude avatar) on adult-friendly camsites like ePlay and Chaturbate.
How Does It Work?
Some of the most advanced LewdTubers have full-body motion capture setups (think 30+ ping-pong balls glued to a body suit) with as many as 12 cameras to capture and render a live 3D avatar in real-time.
But it doesn’t have to be that complicated – or costly. One virtual camgirl, LewdNeko, uses a free ‘avatar puppeteering program’ called VSeeFace to track her facial expressions, but her avatar’s body is static.
The avatar itself is a work of digital art, rendered in 3D modelling software, and it’s common for LewdTubers to have different clothing options (as well as topless and fully nude skins).
Avatars can be updated over time, whether that’s a new outfit or costume, higher resolution skin, or even changes to boob size, bush shape and so on.
What About The Voice?
LewdTubers typically use their own voice, and the webcam motion tracking is good enough to make their avatar lip-sync with their speech.
That means you’re still connecting with a real person and hearing their real, natural replies over the microphone – it’s not a fully virtual AI girlfriend.
But with the rise of ChatGPT and services like DreamGF and Yandere AI Girlfriend Simulator, it’s surely only a matter of time until we start to see completely AI LewdTubers.
Who Are The Top LewdTubers?
LewdTube.com lists 64 current LewdTubers, and aims to include as many virtual camgirls and adult VTubers as possible in its directory – it’s likely there are many more that have not yet been added to the site’s listings.
I spent some time down the rabbit hole and it didn’t take long to find the biggest names in the virtual camgirl space:
ProjektMelody
ProjektMelody is considered one of the pioneers of LewdTubing, and describes herself as the “first hentai AI camgirl” on her X profile.
Her first tweet, on July 8th 2019, was a reply to an avatar designer who posted models on the 3D character portfolio site VRoid Hub – ProjektMelody mentioned commissioning a model of her own.
Her first non-reply tweet, posted less than an hour later, contained a string of binary code that translates as “Constructing AI index“.
This continued to set up a narrative of a sentient AI trying to build its own body, until eventually she debuted as a fully animated virtual camgirl on Chaturbate on February 7th 2020.
A week later, on Valentine’s Day, ProjektMelody’s stream set records that are still talked about when LewdTubers are discussed:
ProjectMelody is still active on Chaturbate, with nearly 350,000 followers at the start of 2024. She’s described as a fit 23 year old from Virtual Little Tokyo with “terrible ADHD“.
She even picked up the prized Creative Cam Show Visionary gong at the 2021 CB Awards. Not bad for an AI-turned cam model!
LewdNekoNya
LewdNeko – who goes by the username LewdNekoNya on some sites – is active across Chaturbate, ePlay and RPLAY, as well as ManyVids, Pornhub and XVideos. She’s carved out a popular niche as an NSFW game streamer.
Her following is smaller, with about 1,500 followers on Chaturbate and nearly 4,000 on X, but again, LewdNeko’s name is familiar to anyone who follows LewdTubers.
LewdNeko debuted in June 2020 as a lewd gamer on the now-discontinued Plexstorm, before appearing on live streams on Chaturbate and ManyVids over the next year or so (with occasional hiatuses each August – she was a student irl).
As mentioned earlier, Neko-chan’s tech is pretty basic, just adding facial movements and lip syncing to an otherwise static body, but she’s said that she would love to upgrade to a full motion capture VR system if she had the space and money.
One cute addition to Neko-chan’s streams is her bell collar. This is something her avatar wears, but also something she wears in real life – and viewers can tip to hear it ring.
Vex Ruby
Vex Ruby is taking LewdTubing to the next level, with ‘haptic feedback’ to viewers’ own sex toys.
What that means in simple terms is, as Vex Ruby uses certain toys on-screen, viewers’ own Bluetooth toys can react too to share in the sensation. We’re covered interactive porn toys before, and this is some next level integration.
Vex Ruby has over 13,000 followers on Chaturbate, and also streams on ViRo Playspace, who developed the motion tracking and Touchback technology that powers her.
On the website, Vex Ruby explains: “My goal as a part of the ViRo Playspace team is to raise awareness of not only the platform, but what the platform represents.
“Guilt, shame, and putting others in a box are not allowed in the world we’re building. In fact, in the virtual world we’re building, everyone is in complete control of their boundaries at all times!“
It’s hard to argue with that!
Are LewdTubers Obviously Not Real?
So far, yes! If nothing else, LewdTuber avatars are typically anime/hentai style, so there’s no doubt that you’re looking at an animation and not a real person. But unlike the thousands of hentai porn games, the interaction is in real-time.
In most cases, the technology is relatively basic too. Even virtual streamers with full-body motion capture are likely to experience plenty of glitches, which can cause them to jump around the screen, clip through furniture, or vanish completely without warning.
The animated aspect is part of the appeal. Virtual camgirls will often spend much of their stream talking about their plans for future upgrades, or any recent changes to their avatar.
As mentioned, avatars’ body shape can be changed quite easily too – so some LewdTubers even allow their audience to decide their bra size or the shape of their pubic hair, in return for a tip of a certain size.
Remember, there is a real person on camera – you just don’t see them, you see their avatar. So in that sense, LewdTubers are absolutely ‘real’.
What Lies Ahead For LewdTubers?
LewdTubers are at one end of the adult AI webcam spectrum – the visuals are computer-drawn in real-time to match their movement, but the audio is (in most cases) their actual voice over a microphone.
Compare this with the other extreme, where OnlyFans creators are using AI chatbots to generate replies, and some are even selling AI-deepfake selfies.
Bring all that technology together and there’s clearly a future where completely virtual camgirls could exist, using ChatGPT to generate replies, text-to-speech to read them out, and AI to draw corresponding real-time hentai (or a photorealistic ‘human’ model).
Until then, the janky graphics and glitches are part of the charm – everyone’s in on it – making this a career path for amateurs who have a hot voice, but don’t want to show their face.
