Since “Her”, Spike Jonze’s film imagined in 2013 a romance between a human and an artificial intelligence, Technosex has evolved to the point that we can now flirt, sexter and fall in love with a conversational agent…
We already knew that Chatgpt could be the scene of fiery intimate dialogues. But recently, the seduction market has acquired applications of a new genre where, with an expensive monthly subscription, we can create a romantic relationship with conversational agents with almost human features.
Most mostly male, users shape the woman of their dreams by giving free rein to their imagination – and sometimes daring all extravagance. Playing ethics, going so far as to flirt with the most problematic mercantile and patriarchal aspects, this dozen applications is growing in a society where artificial intelligence takes up more and more space. What if having a virtual girlfriend became, ultimately, the norm, cheating on classic dating applications? Is it a turning point in our relationship to sexuality?
Often similar interfaces
QUIL S’TISSE DELAND, Crushon is, Frurty, Kubud, Ehenati, CES girlfriends are not yet known to the general public. But the subject is nonetheless interesting to dissect. According to Kaël B., at the head of the specialized site Petite-mie-ia.fr, it is“And chatbot based on advanced technologies. Among these technologies, we find the NLP or Natural Language Processing. This is what allows AI to read and interpret conversations.
The machine learning Another technology that allows girlfriends to garner and analyze data in textual, audio or even visual form. It is thanks to this that they are able to interpret and imitate human behavior. Finally, multimodal interfaces are also an integral part of the operation of AI girlfriends. It is thanks to this technology that AI is able to understand text, image and even audio ”.
These applications, despite their technical specificities, differ little from each other: their interfaces are more or less similar, their price is more or less the same, between 15 and 30 euros per month depending on the options that the user chooses … It is especially in the choice of “models” that these AI girlfriends stand out. Indeed, once subscribed, the user comes across a page where he can scroll around twenty different women and choose according to his tastes and fantasies.
A “vicious circle”
There is thus a wide panel of ages, nationalities, skin colors, corpulence, but also different trades. Each woman has her story well and will be able to answer for the most realistic way possible, knowing that the idea is to flirt and then sexter. Because yes, the virtual girlfriend, intrinsically choreable to thank you, can strip and perform all the desired tasks.
According to Serge Tisseron, psychiatrist and author of Day when my robot will love me – towards artificial empathy, These applications are no more or less than “New kind of peep-show, where lascivious poses and exciting words are now provided by AI those who go to these platforms come to seek there pleasures that often lead to masturbation. ” Can these virtual behaviors are transposed into real life?
According to him, there is a “Contextualization factor” very important: “On this genre of applications, in particular Candy AI, plus a character refers to a fictional universe, the less likely it may cause behavior reproduction in reality. In addition, the impact of these applications is limited by the partner’s agreement or refusal. By trivializing certain behaviors which previously belonged to perversity or disease, pornography has widened the field of possibilities. But at the same time, the importance of consent has been reinforced. On the other hand, these applications can disrupt the way in which we approach possible partners, leading to failure and encouraging the user to fall back on the application, in a vicious circle. ”
What does technosexuality cover?
Since Iowa, Meenakshi Gigi Durham, professor of feminist media and author of several books on sexualities, gives us an appointment on Zoom. In a world where sex and AI have very real but even more or less confidential relationships, Technosex: Precarious Corporealities, Mediated Sexualities, and the Ethics of Embodied Technics (“Technoosexuality: bodily precarity, mediated and ethical sexualities of embodied techniques”), his 2016 work published by Palgrave Macmillan (not translated), refers – being for the time being the only one to talk about it.
In a kind smile, she explains this parentage, anything but trivial: “It is the union of embodied desires and machines, an active coupling which allows sexual subjectivity. In other words, technosexuality refers to the interfaces between human bodies, technologies and sexualities. We live in a time when these relationships are mutually constitutive, that is to say that they interact so as to define themselves and redefine each other permanently.”
Teacher Emeritus, it was she who invented the term “technosexuality” ten years ago, even if we were still far from this model … “It is not completely new. The phenomenon has simply been amplified by the dazzling development of new technologies. And today, some people engage AI as sexual or love partners”, she traces, aware that a large number of issues stems from this evolution.
For … but especially counter
“First, we must remember that all technology is linked to the economy, and therefore to power and patriarchy, which do not shine by their progressivism. Thus, these kinds of applications, created by men for men, most of the time in the West, is a vector of inequality: the image of women is stereotypical and strengthens domination relationships.”
The researcher considers that applications like Candy AI can “Help people who feel alone” – they would have even allowed some of their students to lgbtqi+ “Get out of the closet online before doing it in real life” – But that they are not a good thing, as it is necessary. “I don’t think we can backtrack. We opened the Pandora’s box.
It’s the future, and we have to do with it now. The question is: how? Many technologies are useful, But we must remain extremely vigilant about the new possibilities they offer. There is a lot to do to make them more ethical. We must collectively talk more about it, study the subject and remain critical. Always.”
But then, who are those who flourish in this parallel world? THE gamers tend to correspond to the profile of the typical user. They are recognized in particular by their grammar, essentially composed of acronyms in English, the best known of which are POV (in the first person), tryhard (play with determination), noob (a new) or NSFW for not safe for work. This expression designates a site where shocking, violent or sexual words are admitted.
A paradoxical absence of women
In the image, therefore, of certain applications ofAI girlfriends, such as Girlfriendgpt, Trynectar AI, Charfriend or Onlychar AI. Here, it is the scenario that dictates the fantasy: we have the opportunity to create the story of our dreams in the most immersive way possible. We can “Take an 18 -year -old homeless man under his wing” on Charfriend, “Become a math teacher who gives bonus points to his students” on Trynectar, or “Buy a goblin slave to the black market” On Onlychar. A whole program.
Because these practices are still confidential, it is difficult to find a user inclined to talk about the job he makes of these sites. To do this, you have to go to Reddit, where you freely discuss sex and AI, where you wonder what is the best way to “Get sucked”, of “lever” and other joyfulness. We exchange suggestive photos where women have ever bigger breasts, we elect the best application, we vote for the most inventive scenarios. And after hours spent on these discussion groups, it is clear that a single woman has not met and that such applications intended for people attracted by men do not seem to exist.
For Zinnya del Villar, data and technology director at Data-Pop Alliance, a think tank non -profit which aims to develop the big data In the service of humans, and in particular to create AI platforms that are responsible, it is at the level of ethics that the rub: “The first problem is the lack of transparency of this kind of applications. Most data come from prohibited platforms – conventional pornographic sites, even pedophiles, and so on … In addition, we are entitled to question the use of users. Finally, we do not yet know the real social impact of these uses. Since the advent of the Internet and social networks.
Loneliness as an engine
Serge Tisseron shares this observation. But for him, the rise of these platforms tells something else: “The extreme loneliness of many people. We see more and more single people who are looking for a confidant like Chatgpt, and now an embodied partner like on Candy Ai. We have reached a threshold where we no longer need to believe that we are addressed to a person: AI is perfectly perfected to simulate it, but we can prefer to deal with an imaginary creature, like a fox woman.
It is a rocking towards the culture of the lure assumed by the user. What is sought is not an appearance of a real woman, but an image that has the specific elements capable of exciting desire. This is a tilting: figuration no longer needs to be given for resemblance, as with the erotic postcards of the XIXe a you xxe centuries. It is a real break. ”
According to the figures available to Data-Pop Alliance, the soufflé is not about to fall back: in the United States, the market of AI girlfriends weighs 40 billion euros and receives almost 30 % of young adults, who plan to use a romantic artificial intelligence assistant. Internationally, one in four admits having already flirted with a chatbot.
Everything seems to be gathered to make these long -term, substitute partners, alternate or added to these conversational agents. And – Who knows? – To redefine the notions of love and sexuality. Who could have predicted, fifteen years ago, that the influence of Tinder and others would change the essence of many human relationships? This is, for sure, the bet that those who hide behind these new AIs, future companions of everyday life do.
