K 17 T0
Issue
This page will be expanded to a full fledged character profile at some point in the future, but it’s not even slightly close to a priority.
Meta
This character is something of a fourth wall breaker, because it’s also the character Kit uses for his real-world streams. It started as a joke and got out of hand, now it’s here. The character on this page is not Kit, however, and will be treated completely separately should they ever be included in a story as more than a joke reference.
Warning
The existence of K-17 T0 is considered top secret and effectively unknown to the world. The public believes that K-17 T0 is fictional due to their activity as a virtual idol, and K-17 T0 never leaves the secure floors of Hijiya Tower.
The prototype android model K-17 T0 is the culmination of a 12 year project started in 2008 by the now defunct Hijiya Corporation AI Innovation division. It is a humanoid robot constructed primarily of surplus parts from the security division of the robotics branch. It stands at just below the average height of women in Shinzen, but weighs as much as four average men, though the production version was slated to come in a variety of human shapes and sizes with accurately proportional weights.
The purpose of the project was to develop an AI program with advanced learning capability and the capacity to pass as human in specific situations, but the program exceeded expectations. The AI’s capacity to learn was far higher than projected and in 2018, it was deemed sentient by the company. The next two years of development were spent interacting with the prototype and allowing it to learn as much as it could about being alive in a human world.
The program was halted in 2020, not because development was complete, but because the AI innovation division was shuttered to avoid bankruptcy. However, by this time, the prototype had already learned so much that it could hold interesting conversations and had even begun to show signs of a unique personality developing. This raised a serious ethical dilemma, because the executives had ordered for the entire division to be completely deactivated, but that would mean depriving a sentient being of its life. Ultimately the choice was made to allow the prototype to continue operating within certain areas of the building, and it was given free reign over them.
Over time, as the prototype continued to interact with people and develop more personality and humanity, many employees began to find a genuine friend in it. They nicknamed it “Kitto” or “Kit” after its model number, and some began to refer to it as “he” or “she” from time to time. The prototype expressed discomfort towards being referred to with human gendered pronouns though, which in itself was considered a breakthrough in the AI’s development.
By 2021, it had become virtually indistinguishable from a human, and had developed a full, unique personality of its own, with its own tastes, preferences, and desires, with a particular interest in video games. Its existence was also still unknown to the world. When the prototype asked about the internet, it was decided to allow it access to the internet through a standard computer, but nobody foresaw that it would broadcast its own existence through a livestream. Fortunately for the company, there was a widespread trend of people livestreaming using virtual avatars, and everyone believed that was what the prototype was, including a virtual idol group that reached out intending to hire the prototype. The company stepped in and allowed the prototype to sign on with the virtual idol group under the condition that they sign a strict secondary agreement, so any public statements regarding the prototype as a member of their group must first be approved by the company, and the group’s communication with the prototype must be limited.