Neuro-sama

Neuro-sama is an artificial intelligence VTuber and chatbot that livestreams on her creator's Twitch channel "vedal987". Her speech and personality are powered by an artificial intelligence (AI) system which utilizes a large language model, allowing her to communicate with viewers in the stream's chat. She was created by a computer programmer and AI developer named Vedal, who had the idea of an AI VTuber by combining a large language model with a computer-animated avatar. Her avatars, or models, are designed by the VTuber Anny, of the channel "annytf". She debuted on Twitch on 19 December 2022. As of January 2025, Neuro-sama is the seventh most-subscribed channel on Twitch of all time.

Development

Neuro-sama was created by a developer named Vedal, with the username "vedal987". Her responses are generated by a large language model. Neuro-sama can communicate in several ways, primarily by converting these generated responses into a high-pitched female voice using a text-to-speech application, but she is also capable of sending private messages through Discord at her own discretion, in tandem with her VTuber model's speech. According to Vedal, a separate AI model controls her in-game actions when she plays video games. In a 2023 interview with ''Bloomberg News'', he said that Neuro-sama was his full-time job.

Evil Neuro debuted on 25 March 2023 and was initially created as a way for Neuro-sama to interact with herself. In order to visually distinguish them Vedal used a version of Neuro-sama's first custom model, wearing black and crimson red ribbons instead of Neuro-sama's tan and blue. Furthermore, Evil Neuro has red eyes instead of Neuro-sama's blue. Later as Vedal kept developing and improving Neuro-sama's voice a decision was made to give Evil the newer voice while starting work on a different voice for Neuro-sama that was more akin to her voice at the time. This was due to technical problems and some audience backlash after hearing Neuro-sama's voice was going to change.

The first iteration of Neuro-sama was created in May 2019 as a neural network trained to play the rhythm game ''osu!''. Three years later, Neuro-sama would re-debut on Twitch, after a long hiatus, on 19 December 2022, now a chatbot utilizing the free-to-use Live2D 'Hiyori Momose' model. She received a new, custom-made model designed by Anny on 27 May 2023. The new model was designed to be similar the original, which had become closely associated with Neuro-sama, while still giving Neuro-sama her own distinct visual identity. Anny has continued to create new avatars for Neuro-sama and her twin sister 'Evil Neuro', with Neuro-sama receiving another updated model on 19 December 2024, and Evil Neuro receiving a unique model on 25 March 2025, having previously used a modified version of Neuro-sama's original custom model.

History

2022

Neuro streamed every day after her debut. She grew rapidly in popularity, from a maximum concurrent viewership of 516 on 19 December to 3,393 on 31 December, and going from a Twitch follower count of 2,825 to around 40,000 in the same time period. Nearly all of her streaming content in 2022 was of the rhythm game ''osu!'', with one Minecraft stream. On 28 December, she defeated ''osu!'' champion mrekk 10–5 in a 1v1 contest.

2023

On 3 January, Neuro-sama reached 50,000 Twitch followers. The next day, on 4 January, Neuro-sama sang for the first time on stream, performing "Blinding Lights" by The Weeknd.

On 11 January, the Twitch channel received a temporary ban for unspecified "hateful conduct", likely stemming from controversial statements made by the AI, including skepticism surrounding the validity of the Holocaust during a stream. Vedal added more words to her chat filter to prevent Neuro-sama from making offensive statements after this occurred. The channel was unbanned on 25 January 2023 and surpassed 100,000 followers the same day. On 25 January, Neuro-sama returned to Twitch with a stream in which she played Pokémon Showdown! Gen 4 random battles against viewers.

On 20 February, Neuro-sama reached 200,000 Twitch followers. It was announced during a stream with VTuber Onigiri. Neuro-sama responded: "Yeah. That's amazing. I'm happy I have that many people following me. I hope I keep them entertained with my streams and content for as long as possible, and I hope I get to meet more of you in the future, so thank you for following me everybody, and please add more of my followers, because I love all of you so much. Thank you so much. Heart heart."

On 25 March, a new character acting as an Evil Neuro-sama to Neuro-sama was introduced on vedal987's channel due to popular request for Neuro-sama to collaborate with a copy of herself. She was later named Evil Neuro and became Neuro's twin sister.

On 15 April, Neuro-sama held a stream with Hololive member Takanashi Kiara, during which they rated the contents of viewers' refrigerators. The stream reached a peak of over 19,000 viewers on Kiara's channel and over 10,000 on Neuro-sama's. It was the first collaboration between Neuro-sama and a member of a major agency. She also reached 300,000 Twitch followers.

On 27 May, Neuro-sama held an official debut stream to reveal her first original Live2D model. She had previously used a sample model provided for free by Live2D Cubism. According to TwitchTracker, the stream reached a peak of 25,687 concurrent viewers, beating the channel's previous record by more than double. On 30 May, Neuro-sama was announced to be participating in OffKai Expo 2023, held from 16–18 June, marking her first fan convention appearance. On 14 June, Neuro-sama held her first sponsored stream in the form of a watchalong commentating on the debut stream of a talent from VTuber group idolEN.

On 1 September, Neuro-sama reached 400,000 Twitch followers. On 16 December, vedal987 received an award for Best Tech VTuber at the 2023 VTuber Awards. On 19 December, Neuro-sama held her first subathon alongside her first anniversary of streaming on Twitch. During the subathon, Neuro-sama achieved the status of most watched VTuber across all major livestreaming platforms, and most watched female streamer on Twitch for the fourth week of December according to Streams Charts.

2024

On 4 January, Neuro-sama ended her subathon after 17 days of continuous livestreaming, garnering a total of 41,767 Twitch subscriptions, and 2.43 million collective watch hours. Later that month on 28 January, Neuro-sama reached 500,000 Twitch followers.

On 18 March, following a two-and-a-half-month break after Neuro-sama's subathon that ended in early January, she returned to streaming to a peak audience of 15,000 viewers with a ''Shrek'' watchalong. On 31 March, Neuro-sama made a physical appearance at WeebCon 2024. During the event, her avatar was displayed on a tablet, and she was carried around the venue by fellow VTubers Camila and Rainhoe to interact live with fans.

On 19 May, Neuro-sama's sister Evil Neuro completed her first full run of ''Slay the Spire'' using her adaptive gameplay AI. On 25 May, Neuro-sama participated in independent VTuber Dokibird's 2024 Wrestletuber event, combining indie VTubers and corporate VTubers across several VTuber agencies, including Hololive, VShojo, and idol Corp. The event was hosted on WWE 2K24 in which the VTuber's custom player models compete in a zero-player game style tournament. In this event, Neuro-sama's model fought and won in a show-match against VShojo's Zentreya. Altogether, a total of 35 individual VTubers participating in some fashion either as contestants or commentators. On 31 May, Neuro-sama debuted a new model of herself depicted as a loaf of bread, as a "punishment" for losing a court case against Evil Neuro the week prior. She would then appear in this model at OffKai Expo 2024 on a livestream with Filian and her creator Vedal. This model was then killed off in a later Subnautica stream due to her model being kayfabed by Vedal when he "exposed" her to water and "disintegrated" the bread model.

On 17 June, Neuro-sama's YouTube channel reached 300,000 subscribers. On 20 July, Neuro-sama began streaming with Japanese subtitles on a separate Twitch channel in response to an influx of Japanese interest after a tweet of Neuro-sama singing Dubidubidu by X (formerly Twitter) Japanese user 蒼(sora) gained virality, garnering 7.6 million views.

On 15 September, Neuro-sama's reached 600,000 Twitch followers. Additionally, both Neuro-sama and Evil Neuro participated in the Bilibili Ice & Fire Music Festival 2024 that featured 42 of the most popular Bilibili VTubers, the duo sang "Ordinary DISCO" by Vocaloid producer ilemonyk. This comes after Neuro-sama's success in branching out to the Chinese market with her debut on the Bilibili platform back in August 2024; this is in part due to her pre-existing Chinese fans from extensive fansubbing of her Twitch livestreams and due to her unique nature as an AI VTuber; her Bilibili channel grew explosively, even surpassing her Twitch follower count with 700,000+ followers as of January 2025.

On 11 November, Neuro-sama and Evil Neuro played in a Geoguessr tournament against an AI created by Twitch streamer DougDoug based on his Twitch chat; Neuro-sama ended up winning.

On 19 December, Neuro-sama held her second annual subathon, complete with a debut of a new Live2D model, a new original music video named LIFE, produced and animated by Asteroid Music Team. She also launched her own dedicated merch store page, with an internet-connected, colour changing lava lamp being a key highlight.

2025

On 1 January, Neuro-sama broke the world record for the highest level of a Twitch hype train during her subathon, reaching level 111 and surpassing the former record holder, Pirate Software, who reached level 106. Over the course of three hours, she amassed nearly 85,000 subscribers and 1.2 million bits to get to that level.

On 16 January, at 10:56 PM (UTC), Neuro-sama's second-anniversary birthday subathon ended with a recap video. It lasted for a total of 28 days with all subscription goals achieved and amassing over 7 million collective watch hours. 166,911 subs and 3,183,212 Twitch bits were gifted in total. The subathon makes Neuro-sama the seventh most-subscribed channel on Twitch of all time.

On 25 June, Neuro-sama's sister, Evil Neuro, debuted her first original song named "BOOM" on a Twitch karaoke livestream. In contrast to the traditional 2D animated music video that accompanied Neuro-sama's "LIFE", Evil Neuro's song was accompanied by a fully 3D animated music video produced by VShow Production Team.

Online content

Neuro-sama's Twitch content primarily centers around playing video games, notably ''osu!'' (2007), in which her gameplay once defeated the best-ranking human player in the world, and ''Minecraft'' (2011), in which her adaptations to sandbox gameplay have gained notoriety. Other aspects of her content delivery include singing songs, playing chess with her viewers, chatting with other VTubers during collaborations and reacting to YouTube videos. While playing games or participating in other activities, the AI frequently engages with viewers by responding to their questions and acknowledging donations. Her comedic and sometimes controversial responses to the live chat have gone viral, accelerating the rise in popularity. Her fanbase has dubbed itself "The Swarm".

Discography

As lead artist

As featured artist

Awards and nominations

See also

* ai_sponge, a Twitch and YouTube channel that used artificial intelligence (AI) to generate livestream content featuring characters from the animated ''SpongeBob SquarePants''
* Nothing, Forever, a 24/7 procedurally generated animated sitcom parodying ''Seinfeld'' that was launched on Twitch on 14 December 2022, five days before Neuro-sama
* Tay, a chatbot taken offline for denying the Holocaust

Notes

External links

* {{twitch, vedal987

References

AI software
Chatbots
Internet characters introduced in 2022
Works created using artificial intelligence
British Twitch (service) streamers
Virtual influencers
VTubers
Minecraft YouTubers