In a recently published article titled “‘Obedient, yielding and happy to follow’: the troubling rise of AI girlfriends,” UK-based news outlet The Guardian addressed the proliferation of platforms offering users the ability to interact with AI-driven “girlfriend” avatars.

“At the TES adult industry conference in Prague last month, delegates noted a sharp increase in new websites offering users the chance to form relationships with AI-generated girlfriends, who will remove their clothes in exchange for tokens purchased by bank transfer,” observed The Guardian’s Amelia Gentleman observed.

Gentleman noted developers of such sites “claim they represent an improvement on web-cam businesses, where real women undress on camera and talk to men, because they remove the potential for the exploitation seen in parts of the industry” and “argue that AI performers do not get ill, do not need to have days off, do not get exhausted at the end of a shift, or feel humiliated by the demands made by clients.”

Longtime adult internet entrepreneur Steve Jones (AKA “Steve Lightspeed”) framed the central question thusly: “Do you prefer your porn with a lot of abuse and human trafficking, or would you rather talk to an AI?”

“We hear about human trafficking, girls being forced to be on camera 10 hours a day,” Jones added. “You’ll never have a human trafficked AI girl. You’ll never have a girl who is forced or coerced into a sex scene that she’s so humiliated by, that she ends up killing herself. AI doesn’t get humiliated, it’s not going to kill itself.”

As Gentleman pointed out, those arguments haven’t done much to allay the concerns of critics, “who note that they embed unhelpful stereotypes.”

“In her book The New Age of Sexism, Laura Bates observes that AI companions are ‘programmed to be nice and pliant and subservient and tell you what you want to hear.’” Gentleman wrote.

Of course, the concern around the growing popularity of AI girlfriends isn’t limited to feminists or child welfare advocates. Within the adult industry, there is concern about competing with AI beings and the platforms that enable them.

“AI dating is very new for us. How do we deal with competitors which allow you to build your own fantasy rather than having a real connection with a woman?” Gentleman quotes an unnamed executive with Ashley Madison as saying. “Some people opt out of having real connections because they want to build whatever they want in their head. In the end when you want to actually meet someone, no one’s going to fulfil that expectation.”

Jones waved away that worry, however.

“It’s not replacing going out on a date and getting a girlfriend or having a lover, wife or a relationship,” Jones said, adding that AI will allow people to explore behavior they wouldn’t contemplate in real life, without the consequences they would experience in the real world.

“People will say things to an AI that would be abusive if they said them to a real person,” Jone said. “Like: ‘Hey stupid slut, what’s up?’ In a fantasy roleplaying game, people like to be different than how they are in the real world.”

You can read Gentleman’s article in full here.

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