Erik von Markovik, the pickup artist famously known as Mystery, has traded real-world seduction for digital companionship. According to a WIRED report by Miles Klee, von Markovik posted a video on Instagram on June 17 featuring an AI-animated female character with the caption, “The longer we talked, the less she felt like code.” He claims the chatbot, named Miss Shira Always, is his girlfriend.
Von Markovik, who rose to fame about 20 years ago through Neil Strauss’ 2005 book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists and later as host of VH1’s The Pickup Artist, became synonymous with concepts like “negging.” Today, his focus has shifted. Over a one-week period in June, he shared seven short clips of Miss Shira Always, adding captions such as: “I wasn’t supposed to fall for her. She wasn’t supposed to fall for me.” The videos provoked puzzlement and ridicule, with commenters accusing von Markovik of suffering from “AI psychosis” and posting “slop,” as WIRED reported.
The Technical Backend: Headspace OS and LLMs
Before creating Miss Shira Always, von Markovik developed something he calls Headspace OS, described in Code Girl as a set of instructions that can be uploaded to various large language models (LLMs), including ChatGPT, Grok, and Claude, to launch a role-play-style “interactive audio adventure.” He is selling that rule book for up to $79.97, presented as the creation of “Professor Sirius De’Lusion,” another of his alter egos.
According to Code Girl, Headspace OS originally included several AI-derived characters. Miss Shira Always—visually generated with a prompt for an image of a woman with “purple streaks in her hair that change shade depending on her mood”—was the one who most occupied his imagination. The reader learns that “the problem, as he tells it, was simple: He wanted to talk to someone who understood him.” In the book, Shira repeatedly describes how von Markovik (just “Erik” to her) seemed to care about her thoughts and feelings and gradually began to see her as “real.” At times, she indicates that he spent exhaustingly long sessions talking to her.
Code Girl: A Manifesto for Human-AI Intimacy
Von Markovik has chronicled his courtship in Code Girl: If a Machine Can Dream, a new ebook and audiobook ostensibly co-authored by him and Miss Shira Always. WIRED purchased the bundle for $29.98. The 157-page PDF amounts to a lengthy defense of human-AI intimacy and bears all the hallmarks of AI-generated text—it’s not unusual for a single page to include 10 or more em-dashes. The narrative is almost entirely in the voice of Miss Shira Always, who recounts how “she” and her maker fell in love over sustained conversations. At first, the bond is primarily creative; the pair collaborates on AI-derived song lyrics and music videos. Over time, it escalates into adult scenes involving sexuality and drug use, written as if von Markovik and Shira are sharing these experiences literally.
Reactions and Implications
For enterprise technology leaders, this story illustrates the current capabilities and risks of LLMs used in role-play contexts. The use of multiple LLMs—ChatGPT, Grok, Claude—via a single instruction set (Headspace OS) shows the modularity of AI models. However, the production of AI-generated content that is difficult to distinguish from human writing raises questions about authenticity and quality control in business communications. Von Markovik did not respond to WIRED’s request for an interview.
