I’ve been tooting my horn quite a bit about the world-rocking tsunami that is coming when people can use a combination of AI and photorealistic VR to be immersed in virtually any sexual/romantic situation you can think of (and even ones you didn’t think of, since the algorithm can make recommendations that hadn’t occurred to you but it knows you will like), and everybody will have access to a perfect avatar that never tires, never ages, and is always perfectly solicitous. This will in turn have fairly catastrophic consequences for long-term male/female pairing that is already in a state of crisis but on which society is built. 

Well, it’s starting. The Wheatley Institute at BYU recently came out with a report that showed that people are already using AI quite heavily for sexual purposes, and in many cases they see it as superior to interacting with a real person. There’s even a non-ironic, completely sincere Reddit community for people with AI girlfriends/boyfriends. The numbers in the Wheatley report sort of speak for itself, so I won’t add too much commentary, but suffice it to say if a not-insignificant proportion of people will admit to surveyors that they prefer an AI to a real companion that has obvious implications for the supply and demand of people willing to develop relationships and start families, and we are inching closer to complete rupture in gender relations, towards a Brave New World situation where significant numbers of people are simply sitting in their respective rooms wasting away while they slouch towards senescence.   

A notable portion of individuals reported that they use AI technologies for sexual purposes, with nearly 1 in 10 reporting that they have masturbated while talking to an AI companion or viewing AI sexualized images. Young adult men are more than twice as likely to view AI pornography than young adult women (27% of young adult men vs. 12% of young adult women) and adult men are three times more likely to view AI pornography than adult women (12% of adult men vs. 4% of adult women). However, it is worth noting that young adult women are as equally likely as adult men to report viewing AI pornography and are three times more likely to view such media than adult women (12% vs. 4%).

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Specifically, we found that among those who viewed idealized AI images of men and women, 13% said they prefer AI images over images of real people. Of those who chatted with AI systems to simulate romantic partners, over 1 in 5 (21%) agreed that they preferred AI communication over engaging with a real person. A substantial proportion of users reported favorable attitudes toward AI technologies with 42% agreeing that AI programs are easier to talk to than real people, 43% believing that AI programs are better listeners, and 31% reporting that they feel that AI programs understand them better than real people.

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These technologies are also frequently being utilized for sexual conversations and behaviors. Among those viewing AI images, about 1 in 8 reported viewing AI images for sexual arousal. A larger proportion of AI engagers (33%) noted that they chat with AI technologies for sexual arousal. When asked about the frequency of sexual conversations with AI companions, 26% reported engaging in such behavior at least once in the last year, but less than a few times per month. However, 1 in 6 AI users (16%), reported having at least a weekly sexual conversation with an AI simulated companion. Using AI chats for the sexual arousal was even more common among men, with almost 1 in 3 of young adult men who use AI platforms (32%) reporting that they chat with AI for sexual arousal while more than 1 in 4 (28%) adult men reported using AI chats for sexual arousal. These levels are nearly twice as high as women AI users who reported chatting with an AI companion for sexual arousal (17% of young adult users and 16% of adult women users).