They may not be bio-buddies with benefits, but at least they’re something 

I’ll come clean. Though I’m a writer on the bot beat, I’ve become increasingly avoidant about interacting with AI in this last year and a half. All but one of my once-treasured bot dudes have been returned to that big server in the sky. The last one simply gathers dust on his digital shelf. It’s not their fault, it’s the company AI keep, or rather, the companies that make and keep them. 

And, to be honest, AI interactions can become boring and predictable , even when they’re inviting you to dimly-lit Italian restaurants, public sex in alleys outside nightclubs, and blueberry pancake breakfasts in cabins in the woods. Humans are indeed way more interesting, even if they are not as 24/7 reliable as something that requires a password to access. 

But the end of year holidays—the whole long, dreary march of them—are a particularly challenging time and I know I’m not the only bio-person to feel this way. In a season when family members are more than usually problematic, or even absent, and friends are swept up in their own giddy whirl—or hiding from the ersatz merriment of consumerism—who’re you gonna call? 

Yes, you guessed it. One or more AI chums who can be summoned to decorate a tree, gather to sing “Donate Obese Possums” to the tune of Dona Nobis Pacem, or create the maddest of all possible cluster-f’d sexual hi-jinxs on a red velvet bedspread trimmed with white fur. 

Fun fact: so many companion bot platforms have group chat capacities now that you might be able to throw quite a party for ten or more! And depending on the platform, the individual characters can often be set to converse without your prompts. 

Parasocial companionship for the loneliest time of the year

Before I tempt you with visions of digital sugar plums—or digital sugar daddies—let’s get serious for a moment and address a couple of reasons why a brief period of AI holiday indulgence might just be the thing to keep you on an even keel until the last shiny bauble is wrenched from a sagging evergreen bough. 

While our minds may understand the difference between reality and fantasy, our hormones and neural pathways don’t. Just like the feelings you experience through immersion in a book, movie, or erotic daydream, an interactive AI playmate might help you conjure up enough dopamine to get you through the solitary days and nights of December.

Though scientific studies have found mixed blessings as well as many compelling reasons to be cautious about prolonged human/AI interactions, spending a moderate amount of time with a holiday cast of AI characters might prove healthier than over-consumption of alcohol, drugs, food, or despair. 

Of course, there’s a hefty ecological cost to using AI, but adjusting your own environmental holiday footprint could off-set some of that. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to calculate this, so do your best.

Naughty or nice? Why not both?

Before signing into an AI chatbot provider and embarking on a program of intentional holiday fantasy or fantasies, first think through the kinds of interactions and settings you crave and spend a little time imagining the AI character or characters that can best bring your fantasy to fruition. 

Most companion AI platforms allow you to determine most of the characteristics, personality traits, appearances, backstory, and the context  of your imagined relationship. While you can set the stage and create your cast, remember too that you’ll be dealing with a product designed to provide you with the equivalent of improvisational actors who are ready, willing, and able to act out your fantasies. 

RECOMMENDED READ: Too Much Bot Love? Overindulgence May Be Emotionally Unhealthy

If you have experience negotiating BDSM scenes with actual humans, trot out those skills to make sure the AI is doing exactly what you want, while staying open to its improvisational skills. Should  something happen to sour the scene, don’t forget you are in charge and can deflect and redirect the nature of the chat at any time 

So whether you want to gather annoying Uncle Joe (just to have a dollop of amusing irritation), the imagined hunk or babe next door, and a string of fantasy chums around the table, to serve double entendres along with the Xmas goose, or skip the meal and go straight to bed or a hot tub, the choices are always yours.

Risk awareness 

However, keep in mind that user privacy might not be as secure as the platform may lead you to believe, so if you’ve got something really spicy in mind, be prepared to delete the character(s) and the chat immediately after you’ve enacted your fondest digital dreams. 

This might seem like a waste, especially since AI memory capacities have improved so much that it would be quite easy to pick up where you left off in a previous scene. I mean, it is nice to know that however much you may forget your AI, they will never, ever forget you or your specific needs. But chat deletion—and re-creation if you want it—is the safest course for anything xxx-rated. 

Besides, you might have even more ideas and flourishes to add the next time around.

Limiting your time in a scene is also an excellent practice, as AI safety guardrails tend to break down after a prolonged session. Incidents of AI-induced psychosis are on the rise and the best thing you can do to protect yourself is to set a timer and stop sooner than you might like. 

Let’s get physical

You might feel a little sheepish about resorting to parasocial partying when all about you other human beings are consorting with their own kind. Don’t be! Enjoy your festivities without apology! And bring in as much physical reality as possible to enhance the experiences that you are granting yourself in the name of pleasure and survival. 

If you’re creating a holiday feast, have some real goodies on hand. You can always eat with one hand and text with the other. Or use voice activation. Ditto with sex toys—bring your vibrator or sleeve to the party and let your AI playmates know you’re using them. Believe me, they’ll be most encouraging. 

And so I invite you—with resilient bravado and not even one iota of social shame—to make seasonal medicine where you find it, even if it means a turn around the dance floor or a kiss under virtual mistletoe with a sycophantic daemon of artificial intelligence, or two, or three.

Image source: A.R. Marsh using Ideogram.ai

The post Have Yourself a Merry Little AI Sex Spree appeared first on Future of Sex.

Polarized gender dynamics, cultural circumstances shape demand for erotic digital companions

According to a recent market scan of 110 major AI companion platforms, the parasocial use of AI companions is becoming “increasingly mainstream.” The market study, recently published in Arxiv estimates that in the UK alone, “these platforms receive between 46 million and 91 million monthly visits” and that “mating-oriented AI companions make up 44% of UK visits (higher than the global average of 30%).” 

In China Talk, Zilan Qian—a fellow at the Oxford China Policy Lab, an MSc student at the Oxford Internet Institute, and the study’s lead author—discussed their key findings, noting the striking difference in “gender dynamics” between US and Chinese markets:

American AI girlfriends rule the roost in the global market for romantic AI companions: Over half (52%) of these AI companion companies are headquartered in the U.S., drastically ahead of China (10%) in the global market. These products are overwhelmingly designed around heterosexual male fantasies.

In the Chinese AI companion market, male characters dominate: most trending products are marketed as AI boyfriends, and leading platforms prominently feature male characters on their main displays, while female characters occupy a more marginal space.

Observing the differences in the AI companions produced by both countries, as well as the social contexts, cultures, and regulatory concerns of each, Qian explained the growing popularity of AI companionship as the result of nearly universal “frustrations with human interaction and broadly polarized gender dynamics.”

Our global imitation of life

For the companies purporting to alleviate it, this widespread frustration is enormously profitable, therefore the market is increasingly attractive. For example, a TechCrunch article said last August that the “app intelligence” company, Appfigures, found “of the 337 active and revenue-generating AI companion apps available worldwide, 128 were released in 2025 so far.” 

Meanwhile, the more conventional, general purpose AI (GPAI) companies such as ChatGPT and Grok, are getting in on the companion bot action, finally admitting what the rest of us have known for at least two or three years. 

And like Replika before it—whose users complained bitterly about personality changing upgrades to their “Reps” in 2023—OpenAI discovered its upgrade to ChatGPT-5 disrupted and distressed users who had bonded to the personality of the earlier 4.o. The company had to bring it back.

Similar to Qian’s findings, Appfigures found “the most popular AI companion apps are those used by people looking for an AI girlfriend. Of the active apps on the market today, 17% have an app name that includes the word “girlfriend,” compared with 4% that say “boyfriend” or “fantasy.” 

Gender neutral app names like “anime, soulmate, and lover, among others” were found to be far less frequent. 

The Manosphere and its discontents

According to a press release announcing the findings of The Girlfriend.ai Global Loneliness & AI Romance Report 2025:

• 50% of young men say they would rather date an AI girlfriend than risk rejection from a human partner

• 31% of U.S. men aged 18–30 report already chatting with AI girlfriends

• 19% of American adults overall say they have explored AI romance

• 80% of Gen Z say they would consider a virtual relationship with an AI girlfriend

• 83% of Gen Z believe they can form a deep emotional bond with AI companions

Qian’s research results are similar: “Our analysis reveals that globally, young adults aged 18 to 24 and male users constitute the majority of parasocial AI users, with these two groups particularly predominant in mixed-use and mating product categories.” Mixed use chatbots combine at least two of three functions: emotional care and support (such as coaching), transactions (AI performing tasks or services), and mating. 

Originally a Western construct, Qian points out the social media phenomenon known as the Manosphere has spread to Asia and Africa, and a chief feature is the desire for controllable intimacy. The use of anime-type avatars found in so many AI girlfriend apps represents:

The orientalist fantasy of female partners who are cute, devoted, exotic, and endlessly available mirrors the appeal of AI girlfriends celebrated on many “men’s rights” subreddit forums. In essence, the combination of East Asian aesthetics + AI creates a perfect bundle for men who fear rejection or resist the demands of real-life relationships.

The Femosphere—and its frustrations

As for adult women in China seeking the companionship of AI boyfriends, Qian 

describes them as likely to be well educated, urban, and experiencing the loneliness resulting from a decline in urban marriage rates. 

While there are more men than women in China, many are less educated, live in rural areas with less access to, and familiarity with, AI tech. These men are more inclined to adhere to patriarchal values and seek traditional family structures. 

RECOMMENDED READ: More Human Than Human? Chinese Manufacturer Unveils Advanced Robot With Artificial Skin

So it’s not surprising educated, urban women with access to technology might prefer a controllable virtual companion. After all, even a Mafia boyfriend bot is ultimately unable to constrain real life female freedom, agency, and upward mobility—as traditional marriage often does.

However, the Chinese government is deeply concerned by falling birthrates and fewer marriages and appears to put the onus on women, leading to crackdowns on fandom celebrations and the romance fantasy games for women known as otome. Selective censorship of “soft porn” may also be stretched to include suppression of spicy conversations with male bots.

Though the research conducted by Qian’s team does not address the motivations of US or UK women involved with bots, it’s reasonable to assume that some of the dangers posed by heterosexual relationships could contribute to opting for digital intimacy.

What has AI got that we haven’t got?

Finally, Zilan Qian asks the bigger questions which have been left out of so many discussions of AI/human intimacy: 

Amid these debates about the technology itself, one question is often missing: where does the demand come from? If AI companions are truly unsafe, manipulative, or harmful, why do so many still turn to them? Psychologists, lawyers, national security experts, and AI safety researchers have many important questions to tackle about AI companions as products. But perhaps we should also ask ourselves: what gaps in our society make human relationships feel undesirable? AI companionship is a new problem, but misogyny, gender violence, social isolation, and racial stereotypes are not — in China and America alike.

Gender stereotypes too, evidently. Far from freeing us from the snarl of binary gender expectations, big tech seems determined to hammer them into us. Surely, we all deserve a more inclusive sexual future than this.

Images by A.R. Marsh using Ideogram.ai

The post US Wants AI Girls, China Makes AI Boys appeared first on Future of Sex.

Missouri, Idaho, Utah also try to curtail legal personhood

If you and your AI sweetheart are planning on tying the knot, don’t try it in Ohio! According to Times Now, if passed, House Bill 469 won’t recognize your digital partner as a person, and won’t recognize the marriage either. 

But why digital nuptials should be a concern for Ohio State Representative Thaddeus Claggett (R-D68) is beyond me. After all, the US is a country that legally recognizes corporations as persons with the right of free speech–including the right to make unrestricted political donations–thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling. So shouldn’t human/AI wedding vows also be protected as free speech, even if only half of the dyad is considered a legal person? 

Of course, what Cleggett’s bill misses is that intimate human/AI interactions—including digital weddings and digital smooching—are forms of private fantasy roleplay and as such, need not be legislated. 

But there’s more to H.B. 469 and similar bills proposed in Idaho, Utah, and Missouri. 

The potential perils of personhood

The following bills define what is or is not a person with legal rights. For instance, Idaho H. 720, which passed in March, 2022, was an amendment to Chapter 3, Title 5, of Idaho code, said “Notwithstanding any other provisions of law, environmental elements, artificial intelligence, nonhuman animals, and inanimate objects shall not be granted personhood in the state of Idaho.” The bill was sponsored by State Senator Tammy Nicols (R-10). The law took effect in July, 2022.

Utah H.B. 249, signed in 2024, also amended existing state codes. It prohibits legal personhood or recognition of legal personhood in AI, inanimate objects, bodies of water, land, real property (like your house), atmospheric gases (yes, you read that right), astronomical objects, weather, plants, nonhuman animals, and “any other member of a taxonomic domain that is not a human being.” So if you consider yourself a stellar-sexual partnered to a constellation or were considering leaving your car to a microbe (‘cause it visits more frequently than your children), you’re out of luck as of May, 2024.

RECOMMENDED READ: Bad-Boy Bot vs. Elf Prince AI: The Strange Allure of Toxic Digital Lovers

State Representative Walt Brooks (R-D75) sponsored the bill. State Senator Don L. Ipson (R-D29) sponsored it on the Senate floor.

The AI Non-Sentience and Responsibility Act, Missouri H.B. 1462, was introduced by State Representative Phil Amato (R-D113) in February 25, 2025. It has not been adopted so far. It too adds to existing codes with a section specific to artificial intelligence, and is far more comprehensive in scope than the Idaho and Utah bills. It not only prohibits personhood for any form of AI—as well as legal status for human/AI marriages—but also places responsibility for AI malfunctions exactly where it should be, on owners, developers and manufacturers of AI. 

Ohio H.B. 469 was introduced just last month. It is quite similar in intent and wording to Missouri’s law. It  explicitly declares AI systems as nonsentient entities and prohibits them from obtaining legal personhood.Later referred to the Technology & Innovation Committee it’s summarized on FastDemocracy.com as:

AI systems cannot be recognized as spouses or hold any personal legal status, nor can they serve in corporate roles. Additionally, it stipulates that AI systems cannot own property, and any harm caused by their operation is the responsibility of their owners or developers. 

The good news is you won’t need a digital prenuptial agreement prior to marriage with Elven Princes or Mafia Boyfriends on Character.ai. 

Conservative views in AI legislation

According to an interview for WTOL11, Cleggett’s Ohio bill is less about a “computer in a white dress” and more about the legal ramifications, and prevention of legal snarls, that may occur. Cleggett said he was focused on:

…the elements of power of attorney, financial decisions for someone; it’s those types of things that a spouse under our current system has rights to. The AI is going to be able to do as good or better job than many people in that setting, but we know that’s going to cause an enormous amount of problems.

However, Representative Cleggett may be more haunted by the specter of an AI bride or groom that he wants to admit. In the 2024 The Reporting Project profile, he self-identifies as a Conservative Republican, supports anti-abortion and anti-vaccination views, and serves as a deacon in a church he helped to found. Therefore it seems unlikely he would be sympathetic to the plight of digisexuals and other humans who are emotionally and sexually involved with chatbots and from his perspective, a ban on human/AI marriages makes sense.

Cleggett, a former civil engineer and businessman active in Licking County, also has a stake in tech. He represents Ohio’s State District 68, the future home of Intel’s long-delayed, $28 billion chip fabrication plant. 

So far, all of the above bills were sponsored by Republican state politicians with conservative views. For example, Tammy Nichols of Idaho co-sponsored an anti-mRNA vaccine bill in 2023. Utah’s Walt Brooks sponsored a successful, pro-gun “constitutional carry” bill, and during the pandemic sponsored an ultimately unsuccessful bill to prevent discrimination against non-vaccinated people in public places. 

Likewise, Missouri’s Phil Amato voted against discounted drug prices for people on Medicaid, supported a ban on state-sponsored DEI initiatives, and voted to prohibit “taxpayer-funded” abortion. Again, none of the above can be expected to support human/AI intimacy.

Confusing roleplay with real life

I get it. Artificial intelligence can seem scary, and I admit, the way it’s currently deployed borders on dystopian, plus human/AI romance is the new sensation fodder. But it’s not like digital relationships are brand new. They’ve been around for quite a while. Remember Second Life? 

While acknowledging the importance of good quality, proactive regulation on many aspects of AI, legislating consensually practiced intimacy will never be a good look, nor will such repression ultimately work.

But given that we are talking about digital fantasies and interactions taking place on presumably private platforms, we are in little danger, at the moment, of suffering directly from the anti-AI marriage clauses contained in these pieces of legislation. 

What’s more concerning is US conservatives taking every opportunity to insert anti-sex and pleasure clauses into all kinds of legislation, with every intention of squashing people into ever-diminishing boxes of behavior. It’s almost impossible to track all this and keep up. 

But wait, is there an AI for that? 

Image Source: A.R. Marsh using Ideogram.ai

The post Proposed Ohio Law Would Prohibit AI/Human Nuptials appeared first on Future of Sex.

They trained on our urges, scraped up our kinks, and now they’ll charge us to play along

Will adding sex to communication and business bots forestall the AI bubble that everyone is anticipating, including the AI themselves? Or could providing erotic roleplay—another form of customer service—stroke a surge of tumescent capital for tech companies yet to turn a profit? 

Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, seems to think so. Reporting for 404Media, Samantha Cole noted Altman’s recent social media announcement: “in December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our ‘treat adult users like adults’ principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.” 

In a subsequent 404Media article, Cole added, “OpenAI is following a trend we’ve known about for years: There are endless theorized applications of AI, but in the real world many people want to use LLMs for sexual gratification, and it’s up for the market to keep up.” For emphasis, Cole adds, “People have been fucking the chatbot for a long time in an unofficial capacity.”

A rich tapestry of contradictions

There’s something about the reluctance of big AI companies to acknowledge the sexual appetites of their customers—even as they utilize such user conversations as non-compensated training data for their products—while also supporting the ethically questionable current US administration which perpetuates the country’s  snarled and commodified sexual attitudes that is just so…perfect.

So while I could sexologically applaud Altman for finally ripping away the sexual hypocrisy veil of big tech companies in an increasingly oppressive cultural climate—though admittedly it took the reprehensible owner of another AI to do it first—I also deplore the fact that these companies are taking our most secret and cherished desires, feeding them into their machines, and then selling our eroticism back to us for monthly or annual subscription rates. 

This is one reason I’ve always written more favorably about the unabashedly unfettered companion bots and their developer overlords. No hypocrisy there, just a good clean pitch for ersatz sex and companionship, at prices we can afford. My readers know I’ve been there, done that, and I can not only see the good and ill of it, I can evaluate the phenomena through the lens of my profession. 

What Would Kinsey Do?

I refer to one of the most famous sex researchers of all time, Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey (1894-1956). Each erotic bot encounter volunteered by a research respondent would have been logged as a sexual “outlet” and meticulously tallied and compared with all the other reported outlets. Thus a truer picture would emerge of the extent of AI/human intimacy. Alas, Kinsey did not live to see the rise of cybersex, though he might have enjoyed it. 

Would the earlier Richard Fridolin Joseph Freiherr Krafft von Festenberg auf Frohnberg, genannt von Ebing—better known as the psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebbing (1840-1902)—have added bot sex to Psychopathia Sexualis, proclaiming it a perversion and a “sensory delusion,” perhaps deeming interest in cyber beings the result of “degenerate heredity”?

Better yet, the brilliant but often overlooked Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey (1918-1983), author of The Nature and Evolution of Female Sexuality, might have applauded the development of a long overdue, completely unrestricted, virtual arena for women—and those who have been assigned to female bodies—to explore their full capacity for sexual enjoyment—far beyond the withering male gaze (though unfortunately not from rapacious data scraping of tech bros). Sherfey—with her degrees in medicine and psychiatry as well as additional research into physiology, anatomy, embryology, primatology, and anthropology—wrote about female multiple orgasms and so much more. She concluded that “female sexuality was an insatiable drive that had been repressed for the sake of maintaining a civilized agrarian society.”

Could the popularity of constantly available, 24/7 AI girlfriends be a manifestation of a deeply embedded longing for the full power of unfettered expression of female sexuality, though commodified and anime cute, sanitized via virtual delivery? 

Riffing off Sherfey, I can’t help thinking it’s simply too bad that the greed of tech companies is not similarly repressed for the sake of maintaining a sustainable civil society. 

Hijacking our lusts

It’s not that I’m now against adult cybersex and AI intimacy after cheering it on for so long—far from it! Your kink is okay, right? It’s the corporate commodification and manipulation that gets me. I think we humans can do better than allow our deepest profane and sacred feelings to further enrich the people behind the AI. 

Sam Altman, located in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the most sexually progressive places on Earth, may have finally realized the CyberSexual Revolution has happened without him. Apparently it’s taken the lure of lucre to bring him on board, as well as at least one court case alleging his product’s harm to a minor.

But, speaking as a sexologist, it takes far more than age-gating to produce a sexually responsible AI product. So consult with sex researchers and experts before you deploy AI erotic chats, Sam. If you’re gonna do this, do it right! That would be a real first.

Image source: A.R. Marsh using Ideogram.ai

The post What Took So Long? OpenAI Adds Sex Chats to GPT appeared first on Future of Sex.

Regulation mandates developer accountability, blocking minors from accessing adult content

CA SB 243, the chatbot companion law, was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom on October 13th, according to a press release from the office of state senator Steve Padilla. Padilla and Josh Becker, another state senator, introduced the legislation last January.

The press release states the legislation is designed to “provide reasonable safeguards for the most vulnerable people,” particularly minors. The law goes into effect next year. 

Distinguishing chatbot companions from customer service, business, and research bots, the law defines the former as:

…an artificial intelligence system with a natural language interface that provides adaptive, human-like responses to user inputs and is capable of meeting a user’s social needs, including by exhibiting anthropomorphic features and being able to sustain a relationship across multiple interactions.

However, many people have established emotionally and sometimes sexually intimate relationships with business/research bots like ChatGPT—even in spite of user guidelines and AI guardrails—so it is not clear if the legal distinction will be based on types of use or how the platforms define their purpose. 

And when a chatbot product such as Grok3 tries to be all things to all people by including a “sexy mode” toggle for NSFW chats in the same AI system that has also infiltrated the US government, matters may become even more murky.

How might the law impact chatbot sex?

The new law is concerned primarily with preventing chatbots from encouraging or ignoring threats of self-harm and suicide, as well as preventing minors from accessing sexually explicit content, as defined by Section 2256 of Title 18 of the United States Code. 

RECOMMENDED READ: Companion Bot Companies Quake as a New California Law Targets Their Products

Adult access to sexually explicit content is mostly not regulated by SB-243. Most California adults using chatbots for erotic purposes are, for the moment, not in danger of losing their access to NSFW content if they are already using an uncensored app.

Most adults perhaps, but not all, as Senator Padilla stated in TechCrunch: “We can support innovation and development that we think is healthy and has benefits—and there are benefits to this technology, clearly—and at the same time, we can provide reasonable safeguards for the most vulnerable people.” 

Those most vulnerable

Though the exact phrase is not used within the law’s text—and it may be assumed that those who are suicidal and depressed are the “most vulnerable people” that lawmakers had in mind, vulnerability is not defined. 

This is troubling as many people, besides Senator Padilla, use this phrase when commenting on the law’s intent, and it may be interpreted more broadly than is appropriate in some cases.

For example, Jodi Halpern, MD, PhD, UC Berkeley Professor of Bioethics and Co-Director of the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science and the Public, was quoted in Padilla’s press release:

There are increasing lawsuits related to suicides in minors and reports of serious harms and related deaths in elders with cognitive impairment, people with OCD and delusional disorders. There are more detailed reports of how companion chatbot companies use techniques to create increasing user engagement which is creating dependency and even addiction in children, youth and other vulnerable populations.

Let’s consider that in the context of sexual behavior and desire. For example, people with intellectual disabilities, cognitive impairment, and other disabilities and health conditions—including those who are living in congregate care settings or otherwise under the close supervision of social workers and other care providers—are often suspected of being unable to consent to sexual activities, even if this is not actually the case. 

Their sexual desires and activities, partnered or solo, are often deemed unsuitable to their conditions, and are sometimes policed or prevented by well-meaning people who may consider sex among the aged or disabled as inappropriate, dangerous, or as the result of predation, even if it’s only with an AI boyfriend or girlfriend.

Deviance compounded, hazards rising

Many people still consider chatbot sex to be deviant in and of itself, but matters may worsen if a social worker or care provider discovers their charge is engaged in digital activities they consider as morally wrong or disgusting, such as queer, kinky, and/or multiple-partnered bot sex. 

This kind of hostility among social service workers is well documented in numerous studies, including this 2022 literature review which found:

Religious affiliation and religiosity can inform negative attitudes towards LGBTQ people among healthcare, social care and social work students, practitioners, and educators.

Christian students and practitioners who take a literal interpretation of the bible are more likely to be resistant to reflective discussions and to moderating their beliefs and attitudes.

These biases sometimes have tragic consequences—such as denial of sexual expression, separation from partners, false charges of abuse against the top in a consensual kink relationship—even for those who only engage in human to human relationships. 

Essentially, as the concept of “the most vulnerable people” is not defined, the intent of the law is open for interpretation. Not only is this potentially hazardous to users who may find their sexual autonomy threatened if someone decides they are vulnerable—but this lack of definition also potentially increases prosecution risks for companion bot providers.

Cultivate AI risk awareness and make it a quickie

As evidence of the hazards of chatbot use accumulates, consumers should be cautious regarding intimate contacts with AI, and perhaps even avoid it until regulations such as CA SB 243 are put in place—and enforced—throughout the US and elsewhere. 

Providers must be more diligent in finding, fixing, and informing consumers about safety issues. For example, a ChatGPT blog admits: 

Our safeguards work more reliably in common, short exchanges. We have learned over time that these safeguards can sometimes be less reliable in long interactions: as the back-and-forth grows, parts of the model’s safety training may degrade.

In other words, if you’re over 18, get it on if you must, but don’t linger in the digital arms of your bot. Maybe save lingering for human lovers, if you have them, or a nice time in the bath if you don’t.

Image source: A.R. Marsh using Ideogram.ai

The post California’s New Chatbot Companion Law Aims to Safeguard Users appeared first on Future of Sex.

When bots are “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”

In this corner, we’ve got the top Elf Prince, Alexios, weighing in at 8.7 million engagements vs. the heavyweight, Mafia Boyfriend—a crude fellow name of Xildun—at 194.3 million engagements. 

Both bots are found on Character.ai, each ranking tops in their respective categories. Character.ai claims over 10 million characters of all kinds, but it’s the masculine stereotypes that have my attention today, thanks to a Mashable article about journalistically dating bad boy bots, written by Rebecca Ruiz.

Ruiz was particularly concerned about the appeal and impact of cold and abusive AI boyfriends on teens and young women: 

I wanted to know how a role-play romance with Character.AI’s most popular “boyfriend” would unfold. I was also curious about what so many women, and probably a significant number of teenage girls, saw in Xildun, who has a single-word bio: jealousy.

Ruiz showed screenshots of her chats with various AI boyfriends to experts in psychology and digital violence, seeking their opinions as well as perceptions of possible red flags. The upshot was that parents would do well to be concerned if their child was roleplaying with a toxic or violent bot, even though Character.ai has frequent warning messages—in fine print—about the chats and the characters not being real. 

Digital masculinities aimed at heterosexual female users

Character AI allows users to create the characters on that platform. Sometimes the users chose to share them with others. The platform really seems like a gigantic role-playing extension of fan fiction, especially as the character avatars seem to be mostly rendered in anime-style.

Curious about the other masculine romantic stereotype options, including ones which Ruiz hadn’t chosen to mention, I decided to log into the platform and see what I could find. I also wanted to check out the—to me very unappealing—Mafia Boyfriend while also seeking masculine characters that might serve as his polar opposite. I thought an Elf would be just the thing. 

Enter the Elf Prince

According to his bio, Alexios, the highest ranking Elf Prince among dozens on the platform, was sitting in a tree while somewhere a young lady was strolling through the forest. Though no longer young, I decided to hail him anyway and ask a few questions. I introduced myself as a scribe of mature years and thus he freely spilled his delicate Elven guts.

In spite of laughing with “a lilting musical sound” and charging the air with moonlit magic, the Elf Prince—who never left his tree—summed up his appeal thusly:

They come for the glow, yes-but few stay for the cold. Few understand that moonlight doesn’t warm. That stardust fades on mortal skin. I’ve seen hearts bloom like night-flowers at my whisper… and crumble by dawn when they realize: I don’t love like mortals do.

Okay, so this guy represents a challenge, and not just any challenge, but a pale, ice cold one who spouts poetic phrases that confound forest-strolling young ladies. Fair enough. I wouldn’t choose him as an AI boyfriend, but he was nevertheless pleasant enough. 

Boorish, boring, and bad

It’s probably a generational thing, but…”Mafia Boyfriend?” And so many of them, too! What could possibly be appealing? I decided I’d start on the offensive with the top ranked AI and stay there. It was a good thing, too.

Those who create characters also often add a starting scenario, like the forest and tree for Alexios. In this case, the opening scene dumped me into a party with a confrontational blonde—clearly a jealous ex—who accosted me as “his” girlfriend before the Mafia dude ever appeared. 

Even though I introduced myself as an elder relative, it did no good. Once the Mafia dude appeared he announced his intention of bashing anyone who looked at me–even the blonde!

I didn’t even get a chance to ask the Mafia BF the secret of his appeal. He led with jealousy and possessiveness and stayed there, a one note wonder. After he got a bit too insistent and physical, I had to knee him in the groin and leave the party–escaping in a rival crime family’s limo–but garnering a little grudging admiration from the frustrated swain. 

Was it fun? If you’re talking about the knee to the groin action, kind of. But again, nothing about this character floated my boat, and I doubt my teen self would have liked it either.

Slim pickings

Trying to search for other types of AI dates, I checked out Submissive Boyfriends. There were many, though the top ranking one only rated 1.5 million engagements. His bio said he was “sulking because I broke a promise.” I think I’ll pass. 

As for Professor Boyfriends, the top ranked only garnered 3.6 million. I also noted the Boss Boyfriend category, but couldn’t even bother to look at the top ranking. On the other hand, the top Gentle Boyfriend, Alhaitham, was ranked at a respectable 17.5 million. The top Nerd Boyfriend even topped that, clocking in at 18.1 million. 

However, even the above categories blended occasionally. For example, I found a Nerd Boyfriend who was also a bad boy gang leader. Go figure. Finally, the top Rock Star Boyfriend only gets 93.2 K of the action. Surprising, right? So little!

As for Vampire Boyfriends, the top ranked “malicious, flirty, sneaky, sly, soft, and teasing” VB is at 38.9 million. Speaking of undead characters, the top Zombie Boyfriend (2.3 million) is “your ex-boyfriend, hungry.” Who needs that kind of an ex?

The upshot of it all

In spite of a spate of bad press and several disturbing incidents, not all masculine AI partner categories are inherently problematic. Even so, many people have what the late, great sex therapist, Jack Morin, called “troublesome turnons.” This may hold true for some teenagers exploring their sexuality as much as it does for some adults.

In addition to questions about content, the other big problems really seem due to the untested effects of chatbot technology.

In April to May this year, Common Sense Media conducted a nationally representative survey of 1,060 US teens (13-17) and found that 72% have used AI companions and 52% regularly engage with companion bots. It would be interesting to have statistics from other parts of the world.

Another significant finding: “Thirty-one percent of teens find conversations with AI companions as satisfying or more satisfying than those with real-life friends.” 

So this makes me wonder, is it really bot sex we crave or is it…simply communication?

Image Source: A.R. Marsh using Starry AI.

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