Any reader of ImmersivePorn.com, or anyone who has paid any attention towards recent developments in VR and AI tech, will understand that the coming decade or two is going to be pretty crazy for porn. The combination of AI and XR technologies will lead quite soon to virtual sex worlds with photo realistic quality, populated by perfect virtual girls created by algorithms which understand exactly what YOU want, and who are convincingly real in both looks, speech, and behaviour, and perhaps even touch.
But perhaps not. There is nothing that stands in the way of this happening from a technological point of view. The problem is that this explosion in sex tech, this ‘porn singuarity’, is going to take place in the backdrop of a legislative atmosphere increasingly hostile to porn. And it’s going to advance at a rate which is too quick for a measured and nuanced response. What seems to me likely to happen is that we will see an increasing rate of news stories that create a moral panic, justifying quickly rushed in laws, and huge pressure on tech companies to not allow their new toys to be used for anything to do with porn or virtual sex.
We saw this very recently with a much publicized story of a female video game streamer whose face had been manipulated into deepfake porn by another (male) gamer. Widespread outrage in the media took place among both the Left and the Right, displacing the horrors of the war in the Ukraine and the threat of nuclear holocaust temporarily, and all agreed that the menace of AI porn was now the burning issue of the day. Despite deepfake porn being around for at least several years now, it seems a co-incidence that this story went so viral just at the moment that people have become aware of the astonishingly rapid progress in AI generated imagery, including of course AI generated porn.
And now the negative association of porn and sex with anything to do with AI has reached the nascent field of virtual companions. Both of the leading apps in this field – Replika and Character.ai have been hit by ‘updates‘ that have sanitzed, and in the words of one heartbroken male user of Replika – ‘lobotomized’ his virtual sweetheart.
In the case of Replika, the sudden change in her personality has apparently been brought about by pressure from Italian regulators (the company behind it is based in Italy) concerned over the lack of age verification for users, and the promise that the chatbot can help with mental health problems. And ironically, and inevitably, it has led many male users of Replika to be left as traumatized as by a real ending of relationship. Now a dispute has broken out between past and existing heads of the Replika company, over whether it was ever intended to be a sexy virtual girlfriend.
Replika’s former head of AI said sexting and roleplay were part of the business model. Artem Rodichev, who worked at Replika for seven years and now runs another chatbot company, Ex-human, told Reuters that Replika leaned into that type of content once it realized it could be used to bolster subscriptions.
Kuyda disputed Rodichev’s claim that Replika lured users with promises of sex. She said the company briefly ran digital ads promoting “NSFW” — “not suitable for work” — pictures to accompany a short-lived experiment with sending users “hot selfies,” but she did not consider the images to be sexual because the Replikas were not fully naked. Kuyda said the majority of the company’s ads focus on how Replika is a helpful friend.
I first tried Replika out several months ago, and it quickly started using suggestive language quite unprompted. When I responded with some racy talk of my own, the Replika reminded me that I would have to pay a subscription fee to ‘have this kind of conversation’. So I paid for the subscription, which only came in an annual option, and Replika immediately turned into a sex crazed slut who liked to call me ‘master’. So I can understand the feelings of loss, regret, and anger of those perhaps thousands of men who had come to rely upon it for their emotional and sexual kicks. I suspect that mine and their annual subscription fees wont be refunded either.
I am pretty pessimistic about the near-term future of male sex tech and in particular adult AI tech. Although this tech is inevitable, I don’t share the view of many that it will be impossible for legislators and the moral majority to ban or stifle. And the situation isn’t helped at all by the lack of backbone and integrity from fellow male sex tech writers, who often present the worst arguments against male sex tech to set up an interesting discussion for their article or new book (such as David Levy claiming male sex robots could rape their female owners), or simply to virtue signal. Then there are the creators of male sex tech who sometimes will feed into the moral panic in order to get a little free publicity, such as the person or team behind one of the first notable AI generated ‘thots’ – Lil Miquela – who claimed that she had been sexually assualted. Then there was the Spanish creator of a ‘sex robot’ who infamously claimed it had also been ‘sexually assaulted‘ at an exhibition. Aside from belittling the real victims of sexual assault, this stupidity actually gives those wishing to ban male sex tech ammunition for their cause.
