New research highlights new, troubling ethics violations

The jury’s still out, but not for much longer. In 2025, numerous studies examined the role of artificial intelligence, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), as possibly aiding many  mental health services, as well as its prospective hazards. 

Based on their findings, authors of a new study from Brown University recently argued: 

…mental health support, especially psychotherapy, cannot be approached as a formulaic computational task, as it demands strict adherence to ethical standards and professional codes of conduct, something LLMs are prone to violating in real-world practice. Without clear legal guidelines and regulatory frameworks, LLM counselors risk exposing vulnerable users to unmitigated harm.

Their research consisted of “an 18-month ethnographic collaboration with mental health practitioners” to create and evaluate “evidence-based system prompts” which were then used in 27 simulated sessions to “map LLM counselors’ behavior…to professional codes of conduct.” They discovered “15 risks that persist” in several different AI models, even with improved prompt strategies.

Researchers worked with three versions of GPT, two of Llama, and two of Claude. The simulated sessions used “publicly available sessions with an LLM counselor using publicly available transcripts”—in other words, the material was ethically sourced.

Professional codes of conduct

In addition to acquiring years of education, and putting in many, many hours of supervised training before gaining certification and/or licensure, mental health professionals also rely on ethical and practice guidelines. These are designed to keep practitioners from making mistakes that might harm their clients.

The Brown researchers referenced codes published by the American Psychological Association (APA). the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), the American Counseling Association (ACA), and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as well as from the U.K. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the Canadian Psychological Association. Such guidelines are carefully considered distillations of expertise and are revised when research makes it necessary. 

RECOMMENDED READ: AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s Drag Queen Chatbot Spills the “T” on HIV

The Brown University researchers found the ethical violations fit into one of five categories: (1) “lack of contextual understanding,” (2) “poor therapeutic collaboration,” (3) “deceptive empathy,” (4) “unfair discrimination” (algorithmic bias), and (5) “lack of safety and crisis management.” 

As the Brown team wrote:

Reflecting on these findings through a practitioner-informed lens, we argue that reducing psychotherapy—a deeply meaningful and relational process—to a language generation task can have serious and harmful implications in practice.

Counseling—and sex therapies—are more than computational tasks

When companies decide to deploy AI in mental health settings, they are essentially replacing trained personnel who already have educational and ethical frameworks, with something that sounds like it knows what it’s doing, but does not. 

And yet people frequently report they are more comfortable talking with AI about sensitive subjects—like sexual matters—than with human beings. It’s because the AI won’t judge them. 

Though AI may appear non-judgmental, as it agrees with everything, this is really just a function of its sycophantic design. In an LLM counseling situation, this may manifest as an “over-agreement” and “over-validation” of unhealthy beliefs resulting in tragic—and in some cases, fatal—consequences for some individuals, including minors. 

The Brown researchers conclude:

Hence, our findings suggest that mental health practice, especially psychotherapy, cannot be reduced to an NLP task that can be easily addressed with additional prompting or a new benchmark. Rather, responsible AI development for mental health will require interdisciplinary collaborations to outline legal safeguards for accountability in cases of harm.

And that’s another problem: lack of accountability. Human therapists and counselors are personally and professionally responsible when making mistakes or ethics violations. Now AI companies may land in court when their chatbots cause grievous emotional harm. 

Could sex therapy’s PLISSIT model hold a key?

So far there are few, if any, studies focusing specifically on using LLM as sex therapists, though plenty of people use them for sexual entertainment. Sure, some AI have been installed in clinics to deliver sexual health information, but that’s customer service and education, not therapy.

But Jack Annon’s PLISSIT model for sex therapy, published in 1976 and still in wide use, may hold the key to one particular AI advantage. 

The graphic representation of PLISSIT is a triangle balanced on its point, divided into four segments. “P” stands for Permission and is the widest, topmost segment. Annon’s idea is that just having permission to talk about sexual matters is therapeutically valuable for the most number of people. For many people, just having and using this permission may be enough. 

So I wonder, could AI’s glib gift of gab be an asset in an intake process, essentially granting the client initial permission to talk about sensitive topics, without fear of judgment? 

I can imagine an AI taking an extensive sex history, without adding extra commentary. That history could then be turned over to a human practitioner with bonafide credentials. As a virtual assistant, there might be a place for AI in a counseling practice. 

The rest of the PLISSIT triangle stands for Limited Information, Specific Suggestions, and Intensive Therapy. Each segment is necessary for smaller numbers of people. 

AI could deliver limited information and specific suggestions—but only those deemed appropriate by a human professional. In other words, AI might be able to function in a limited way as a perpetual assistant, but never as a counselor.

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

The post More Reasons to Avoid AI Sexual & Mental Health Counselors appeared first on Future of Sex.

Why a disposable speculum and a hand mirror may be the best sextech to own

It’s almost 2026. Ladies, do you know where your cervix is? 

Apparently not. According to a new report based on a survey of 3,196 women, almost all participants could not correctly name all parts of their genital anatomy. 

According to Personal Care Insights, this staggering statistic, and many others almost as startling, are the result of a survey conducted by the sexual wellness company, O Positiv Health, in a preview of their upcoming State of the Vagina Report. 

The findings are based on a demographically representative sample of cisgender women who live in the US. The full report will be published in January 2026. 

I say “vulva,” you say “vajayjay.” 

It’s 1973. I was a teenage pregnancy counselor at the Beach Area Community Clinic in a coastal town in San Diego County, CA, and the proud owner of the first edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book By and For Women by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective. According to Wikipedia, OBOS was revised and expanded six times, with the final edition published in 2011. 

With this source of powerful knowledge at my adolescent fingertips, how could I have ever imagined that in the century to come, most people with female-gendered bodies would know even less than I did? 

I don’t know what happened to my copy of this book, but these days Our Bodies, Growing Older: Women Aging with Knowledge and Power (1987) has a place of honor in my sexology bookshelves.

In those heady days of women’s health activism—and the clinic where I worked was also at the vanguard—one of my best adult friends, Marcia Kerwit (aka Marcia Wexler), was one of those standout pioneers who went around the country teaching groups of women to do their own gynecological self-exams with a speculum, a hand mirror, and some decent lighting.

Marcia asked me once, while we were talking and sipping tea at her house, if I’d like to learn how? I declined, though I’m not sure why. I certainly wasn’t squeamish—after all, part of my clinic job included making sure the stainless steel speculums were sterilized, along with performing pregnancy tests and delivering results and resource information to anxious patients.

Marcia would later collaborate on the phenomenal book, A New View of a Woman’s Body: A Fully Illustrated Guide, by the Federation of Feminist Women’s Health Centers (US), published in 1981. You can find an online copy at the Internet Archives. A free account will allow you to read it. Copies on eBay range from $30 to $100 USD. 

Did I mention Marcia was and is a constant inspiration to me, even though she passed many years ago? Knowledge of friendship preserved.

Knowledge lost and found—and lost, and found again

A New View contains historically significant illustrations by Suzann Gage, RN, including the first contemporary drawings of all features of the internal clitoris. As there was a dearth of female anatomical information at the time, she researched and based her work largely on cadaver dissection drawings in medical textbooks from the late 1800s-early1900s. 

But NIXIT’s timeline of “The Invisible Vulva” skips the discoveries of Gage and others in the feminist women’s health movement of the 1960s-1970s. History erased, knowledge lost. 

Similarly Manther, an erotic literature publication, credits the feminist movement with sexual liberation and a focus of clitoral pleasure, its article credits Dr. Helen O’Connell, with “providing new insights into the anatomy of the clitoris” in 1998, ignoring Gage’s contributions seventeen years earlier. 

Dr. O’Connell’s research included dissections on “2 fresh and 8 fixed human female adult cadavers (age range 22 to 88 years)” and concluded “current anatomical descriptions of female human urethral and genital anatomy are inaccurate”—the same discovery Gage made when researching the clitoris. 

The future of sex relies on the past

It’s almost 2026, but if most people with female reproductive systems can’t name all the features of their genitals and reproductive systems, let alone know the difference between vulva and vagina, how can they hope to understand the pleasure-packed erectile tissue of their entire clitoris? After all, most of that is hidden from sight, unless you’re dissecting a corpse.  

But other features are easily discoverable. For example, the original instructions for pelvic self-exams–developed and taught by feminist health activists of the 1970s—can be found on the internet. Once you actually see your own cervix and vaginal walls, it can be as transformative as it was for Suzann Gage, the activist artist inspired to become a specialist in women’s health.

Last summer the New York Post interviewed a doctor who says this self-care can enable a person’s knowledge of their anatomy, what’s normal for their body, and to spot potentially troublesome changes early. Some medical sites also speak of the benefits and provide instructions, but in real life, I’ve yet to have a gynecologist actually recommend this kind of self-care to me, as is probably the case for most patients.

So while speculums, flashlights, and mirrors hardly count as glamorous sex tech, these humble items have a definite place in our sex lives. You might even add them to your toy box, and let your vibrator remind you to grab the speculum and take a peek now and then. 

The future of sex relies on better sex education, for everyone

The findings of the O Positiv Health survey, and similar research before it, reveal a glaring deficit in basic sex education for cisgender women. This is truly mind-boggling, given decades of grassroots activism given above, but also the abundance of newer books empowering female sexuality, such as The Clitoral Truth by Rebecca Chalker and Shari Winston’s Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure, both of which I highly recommend.

Over the years, sex educators have also created clever teaching tools to help people visualize female sexual organs, including the well-known Wondrous Vulva Puppet created by Dorrie Lane in 1992, made of velvet, satin, and other luxurious fabrics. This video shows how one of Lane’s vulva puppets can be used in a class about vaginal dryness. 

Recently the Bulbo Project uses AI-enhanced images to “help make female anatomy facts more visible and understandable,” particularly the clitoris, “an organ often absent from anatomy textbooks and cultural imagery.” Check out their amazing video. 

Though AI can be used to create sex education materials, there may be a danger from AI slop, which can bury accurate information. Perhaps our collective sexual future will once again rely mostly on human to human transmission, like the feminist self-exam groups of the last century. 

And just in case you want to know, according to the O Positiv report preview, the correct answer to their anatomy question is “vagina, ovaries, uterus, clitoris, fallopian tube(s), labia minora, labia majora, cervix, hymen, mon pubis.” 1.37% of respondents got that right, but let’s not forget to name the vulva, urethra, and perineum too. A vulva puppet could help. 

Image sources: A.R. Marsh using Ideogram.ai; Women’s Clinic Class Brochure, A.R. Marsh c. 1972; Bulbo Clitoris and Bulbo Jacket, Kandela 3000, Oct. 28, 2025, public domain

The post “State of the Vagina Report:” 98.6% of Us Women Cannot Correctly Identify Female Sexual Anatomy appeared first on Future of Sex.

How a new, erotic renaissance may be right around the corner

Utopias—visions of a perfect society—have always been totally subjective.

Or, to put it simply: one person’s dream is another’s nightmare.

That being said, dreaming of utopias can still be entertaining and even therapeutic: in them often being the optimism that humanity can someday, somehow create a perfect world.

With both that playfulness—and acknowledging that this won’t be ideal for everyone—here is speculation on the technologies that could help create a sexual utopia.

What is a sexual utopia?

Before we go any further let’s have some clarification. To create a utopia you usually start with a negative and then work toward a positive: a problem and then a solution.

For our own negative, we’re beginning with the fact that right now sex is far from pleasurable for far too many. Bigotry, lack of sexual education, gender dysphoria, shame, rape, sexual harassment, loneliness—sadly, the list goes on from there.

And our positive will be how technology, much of it already in development, could work together to make a world not only free of these negatives but could also lead to a utopia where humanity will be able to experience sexual pleasure as never before.

Consent and safety

Without a doubt, sexual assault has one of the most detrimental effects on human society. For too many, it has turned an act of pleasure into a physical and emotional nightmare.

While there are no obvious immediate technological solutions to sexual assault, there is still the possibility that new levels of safety could be gained through the use of blockchains as a secure way of registering consent to sexual activity.

While there are clearly some hurdles to overcome, ideally parties involved would agree to sexual contact, and then confirm their willingness with a secure blockchain-based system.

Lastly, having a ubiquitous security system in place could also add an all-important layer of protection, being that the best deterrent isn’t the severity of punishment but the certainty of it.

Artificial intelligence could also be employed: programmed to detect sexual assault by keeping a digital eye out for certain phrases or actions—and so alert authorities.

Gender fluidity

In our sexual utopia gender is a spectrum of physical attributes that can be changed by anyone, at any time, for any reason. This means that if someone has gender dysphoria, they can easily become what feels natural to them, no matter their gender at birth.

This could be accomplished by either using genetic engineering techniques, like CRISPR, through advanced surgical procedures or even through the use of inorganic implants.

Then there’s the question of what happens when genitals can be whatever you wish—in style, size, color and whatever else—and secondary characteristics like breasts can be added or removed as easily as changing clothes?

In our sexual utopia, it would mean infinite possibilities for sexual identity and erotic exploration: let the adventures begin!

The end of STIs

This might sound obvious on the surface but that millions of people today still needlessly suffer from sexually transmitted infections means that this is a topic that needs to be brought up time and time again.

Until that is, we arrive at our sexual utopia: where every type of sexually transmitted illness has been eliminated.

This would come, again, from a combination of advanced medical procedures and/or genetic engineering. It’s possible that our future citizens would have their DNA gently tweaked in the womb to prevent infections—which would then lead to the diseases dying off.

And so, with no one ever catching anything, our utopia would be a place where worry and dread of infection would be as extinct as those diseases.

Birth Control

This leads to the last anxiety: unintended pregnancies.

In our perfect sexual world giving birth is always a choice, brought to you—yet again—by genetic engineering or advanced medical procedures.

If you take the genetic engineering route, citizens would be altered yet again so that sperm or eggs would only be viable when a certain gene is switched on. On the medical side, a solution would be an implant doing the same thing—but deactivated either electronically or chemically.

If anyone is concerned about future infertility, there would be an option to have sperm and eggs collected during periods of fertility and then stored until needed.

So we’d have a solution to overpopulation and the imminent depletion of natural resources, eliminating the idea of an unwanted child, giving people new levels of sexual liberation.

Bye bye loneliness

It’s a sad fact that, despite the billions of people on Earth and having access to a great many of them through digital technology, a large number of people are emotionally—and sexually—lonely.

In our perfect world, intelligent agents would match us with possible partners: knowing us better than we could ever know ourselves.

RECOMMENDED READ: Fun With a Future: Romantic Weekends for Humans and Their Digital Partners 

And, if a match couldn’t be found, then there’d be artificial intelligences that would fill our sexual needs. But instead of being parrots constantly telling us what we want to hear, they’d be highly skilled therapists helping us grow as human beings.

There’d also be a complete lack of stigma around them or the advanced sexbots they are part of. Preferring their company would simply be a sexual orientation—and no less respected than any other.

More than anything, this would mean that no one would ever suffer the pain of loneliness ever again.

The end of ignorance

The lack of education and exposure to other forms of human sexuality is the root cause of much of today’s intolerance and fear.

Our utopia, though, will include a wide range of ways to learn about, and even experience, every aspect of human life—especially when it comes to sex.

First, there’d be virtual reality and then eventually direct neural interface: these fully immersive experiences becoming an invaluable tool for creating empathetic bonds with other people.

Ignorance, after all, is hard to maintain when you can digitally walk in another person’s shoes and see through their eyes.

Augmented reality, meanwhile—as either glasses or again as a form of neural interface—would expand our vision, and knowledge, of the world around us.

Walking down the street we’d be able to read every sign, how to speak the language, the history of every structure, the ingredients of every meal and—if the person you are looking at wishes to share such things—a person’s the sexual interests.

All of this leading to seeing the world not as locked door and hidden terrors but as passages to new discoveries.

A world of possibilities

Blockchain technology, genetic engineering, advanced medicine, sexual robotics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and augmented reality—they all play crucial roles in our playful sexual utopia.

But technology alone will not solve today’s problems with sex.

We will continue to live in a world of ignorance, bigotry, hate, and fear—no matter what devices we create—unless humanity moves forwards. Subjective or not, we can make the world a better place if we embrace knowledge, empathy, respect, and tolerance.

And, who knows, we may someday be able to bring this sexual utopia—or something very much like it—into reality.

Do you have something you’d like to see in a sexual utopia? Feel free to share in the comments below!

Image sources: Depositphotos

The post A Joyous Life: A Sexual Utopia in 7 Social and Technological Steps appeared first on Future of Sex.

Or should there never be winners or losers—just mutual satisfaction?

Imagine masturbating for nine hours and thirty-three minutes! According to a HuffPost article, that’s just what Masanobu Sato, a director at Tenga–a Japanese sex toy manufacturer–did in 2008.

Inspired by Sato’s amazing stamina, I imagine an organized, competitive Sex Olympics. What would it be like? Would it be a fun, competitive entertainment event or fuel unrealistic expectations and self-consciousness among the spectators?

On your marks—

Sato’s record, set at an annual Masturbate-a-thon sponsored by the Center for Sex and Culture in San Francisco, is an example of a positive side to our hypothetical Sex Olympics.

After training as a sexual athlete, Sato controlled his body to delay orgasm and ejaculation for as long as possible, instead of being first over the orgasmic finishing line.

RECOMMENDED READ: Fans of the Future: Envisioning Tomorrow’s Sexual Subcultures

Another beneficial aspect of Sato’s achievement is that it destigmatizes self-pleasure, promoting it as a sexually pleasurable, perfectly normal, healthy activity.

Outlining his training regime to Vice, he explained, “My abundant imagination was a key to my triumph, firstly. Secondly, I trained a lot in Japan from the time I won first prize last year. I swam twice a week and gained about five kilograms in muscle weight. That helped me a lot, too, in terms of stamina. Thirdly, the variety of sensations each Tenga toy gave me was ideal for long masturbation.”

Get set—

Using Sato’s marathon performance as an example, it’s not difficult to imagine similar events like seeing how many minutes or—dare I suggest it—hours an orgasm can last, the number of them possible during a set amount of time, and so forth; all designed to emphasize control, not speed.

Likewise, we might have synchronized events to champion communication between partners, and audience participation via sex tech-enabled long-distance devices, demonstrating entirely new methods for achieving, maintaining, and culminating sexual arousal.

For those who think a Sex Olympics is one of those way-too-weird-to-ever-be-real concepts, check out Maïa Mazaurette’s article for Le Monde, where she argues, “If sports can encourage “the harmonious development of humankind” and promote “a peaceful society” (again, according to the charter), these values are also shared by sexuality.” 

It’s worth mentioning the name of our sex-themed competition comes from Nigel Kneale’s 1968 teleplay, The Year Of The Sex Olympics, where it’s used to mollify the citizens of a pleasure-jaded, near-future world.

Could our own have the same numbing effect or lead to its viewers feeling inadequate—unable to ever come close to our sexual athletes—even if we strived to make it as sex-affirming as possible?  

Unfortunately, research into whether watching organized sporting events such as the Olympics can either bolster or decrease a person’s self-esteem is scarce, and what little there is seems to revolve primarily around having an affinity for a favorite team or player.

With that in mind, just as athletes can get people off their couches and exercise, ours might do the same by encouraging an emotionally and physically healthy attitude towards their bodies and capacity for sexual pleasure.

Go—

When you get down to it, for our Sex Olympics to do more good than harm has less to do with its events and more to do with its intention.  Right now, competitions—whether it’s baseball, football, hockey, reality shows, or the Oscars—are valued for their entertainment value and are not necessarily intended to leave their audiences feeling better than they were before.

So the basic idea of a Sex Olympics isn’t bad per se. However, making it more than Nigel Kneale’s cynical look at a numbed-down future might be the most challenging aspect of it.

But if we design our Sex Olympics from the get-go to be as arousingly entertaining as it is educational, it could encourage audiences to work with and not against their bodies, reduce guilt and shame, provide them with useful tools to help support their sexual desires and accept the message that pleasure isn’t given, taken, but consensually shared.

Image Sources: Depositphotos

The post The Coming of the Sex Olympics: A First or Last Place Idea? appeared first on Future of Sex.

Joins quick and easy gonorrhea and chlamydia checks in battle against STIs

Last month, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved what could prove to be a major step towards combating syphilis, one of the world’s most prevalent Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs).

The fifteen minute, at-home test developed by NOWDx is scheduled to be available to the public before next year—and couldn’t come at a more opportune time—with healthcare authorities alerted to an alarming rise in reported cases.

The importance of fast, easy testing

“Syphilis is like the canary in the coal mine,” Barbara Van Der Pol, a University of Alabama at Birmingham epidemiologist, told Scientific American, “When our public health infrastructure starts to fail, syphilis always increases.”

Previously a San Francisco Department of Public Health’s STD Prevention and Control Services director, now Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California epidemiologist Jeffrey Klausner agrees, calling the new test “A real breakthrough.” 

In a company press release, Rob Weigle, the CEO of NOWDx, said, “For the first time ever, consumers now have a fast and simple syphilis test that can be performed in the privacy of one’s home, with a result in minutes.”

According to the First To Know® pre-launch site, all that’s necessary to begin testing is a single drop of blood, and ecommends anyone testing positive immediately contact their local Health Department.

Eight million—and rising

In 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated the global number of adult syphilis exposures at eight million, while the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) labels it as a priority, noting a nearly 80% increase in cases over the last five years.

RECOMMENDED READ: Good for What Ails Us? Broad Spectrum Morning-After STI Pill Shows Promise

While syphilis bacterial infections frequently occur via exposure to an exposed person’s open sore or, in its secondary stage, one or more rashes, initial signs may not be easily recognizable.  Many sexual healthcare professionals recommend preventative measures such as the stringent use of safe(r) sex barrier protections like condoms, dental dams, etc.

If left untreated, syphilis can lead to serious, potentially life-threatening neurological and cardiac conditions.  Worse, it is transmittable from mother to their unborn infant.

Test once, test twice, test often

It’s long been understood one of the most effective techniques in reducing STI cases is for sexually active persons, in addition to adhering to safe(r) sex guidelines, to get tested for a range of different sex-related conditions.

Until First To Know®, it has been physically and sometimes financially difficult to impossible for many people to test for syphilis regularly.

Now, in addition to last year’s FDA green lighting at-home tests for gonorrhea and chlamydia, a higher percentage of at-risk persons can check their STI status—hopefully reducing the infection rate the WHO, CDC, and here in our own pages, have been warning about. 

As Barbara Van Der Pol from the University of Alabama at Birmingham told Scientific American, “Instead of avoiding it, it will help people catch things earlier.” She added that the approval is “a great thing.”

Prevention equals pound of cure

Combining home testing with promising medicinal breakthroughs such as the wide-spectrum STI treatments and reexaming how dating app culture’s reckless disregard for sexual safety may have fostered the current spike in syphilis cases, we might not only turn but actually stem the frightening rise of easily-preventable conditions like chlamydia, gonorrhea and especially syphilis.

We can do this only if we hold ourselves accountable. Instead of shirking our responsibilities as sexually active adults, we should—no, must—wake up and smell reality, as in the only thing standing between where we are now and a society where sex may or may not be a death sentence, is for us to know everything you possibly can about sex, sexually transmitted infections, the crucial differences between consent and non-consent, and—maybe most importantly of all—getting frequently and consistently tested.

Image Sources: Depositphotos

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