Speaker 1: Hey, it's Bridget host of There Are No Girls on
Speaker 1: the Internet. And firstly, I just wanted to thank everybody
Speaker 1: for all of the kind messages they've been sending since
Speaker 1: we've been on hiatus. It really means a lot to me,
Speaker 1: so thank you so much. And I have two great
Speaker 1: pieces of news to share with you. First is that
Speaker 1: I am so happy to say There Are No Girls
Speaker 1: on the Internet will be back for a sixth season. Whew.
Speaker 1: I know if I sound relieved, it is because I
Speaker 1: am so We're still talking through exactly when the new
Speaker 1: season will launch, but it should be pretty soon, so
Speaker 1: please stay tuned, and in the meantime, we will keep
Speaker 1: putting things in the Patreon ad free available to anybody
Speaker 1: who wants to listen. Secondly, is that my audiobook Love
Speaker 1: at First prompt AI and the Future of Intimacy is
Speaker 1: on sale today. This is kind of a huge milestone
Speaker 1: for me. I put a lot of myself into this
Speaker 1: project and I'm pretty proud about how it turned out.
Speaker 1: As you probably know, this is my first ever audiobook
Speaker 1: project and it would mean so much to me if
Speaker 1: you were able to check it out. You can get
Speaker 1: it directly from the website Love at first prompt dot AI.
Speaker 1: We will put that link in the show notes, but
Speaker 1: that's love at first prompt dot AI, or directly from
Speaker 1: your preferred platform like Audible or Spotify. I personally am
Speaker 1: a big fan of this platform that I recently learned
Speaker 1: about called libro FM, because when you purchase through libro fm,
Speaker 1: they make a donation to a local bookstore of your choosing,
Speaker 1: which is awesome. But you can get my audiobook wherever
Speaker 1: you get your audiobooks, And truly, this is one of
Speaker 1: the most personal things I have ever made. I don't
Speaker 1: get too vulnerable on the podcast often, so it's a
Speaker 1: little bit out of my standard podcast comfort zone. The
Speaker 1: audiobook explores loneliness, AI companions, and what happens when technology
Speaker 1: starts becoming more intimately and emotional entangled with all of
Speaker 1: our lives. And even if you're thinking, oh well, I
Speaker 1: would never experience intimacy with AI, tech leaders like Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have been pretty explicit about the
Speaker 1: fact that they believe in the future, in the not
Speaker 1: too distance future, all of us will have some form
Speaker 1: of intimate connection with AI. So whether or not you
Speaker 1: believe that or want that, I think all of us
Speaker 1: should be asking questions about that future, since it's the
Speaker 1: future that they've decided all of us want. So I
Speaker 1: spent months talking to researchers, reporters and people who say
Speaker 1: that they are experiencing real relationships with AI, while also
Speaker 1: exploring some of my own experiences. I also spoke with
Speaker 1: experts about the risks of people using AI in this way,
Speaker 1: and my big point, which is that we are so
Speaker 1: busy gawking at and judging the individuals involved and turning
Speaker 1: it into a conversation about an individual moral failure, that
Speaker 1: we're letting big tech companies and the people who run
Speaker 1: them avoid the scrutiny that we know they actually deserve.
Speaker 1: So this project is kind of an attempt to write
Speaker 1: that wrong. It's a complex topic, but I was able
Speaker 1: to speak with some brilliant women who helped me make
Speaker 1: sense of it, people that you might know, like journalist
Speaker 1: Karen how from the BBC and reporter Sam Cole, who's
Speaker 1: one of my personal professional idols who runs four or
Speaker 1: four media, researcher Kate Devlin from King's College, London, and others.
Speaker 1: I also had a lot of personal, honest conversations with
Speaker 1: folks who self report being in relationship with AI, and
Speaker 1: some of those conversations were pretty surprising and actually challenged
Speaker 1: a lot of the assumptions that I showed up to
Speaker 1: this project with. So all of that to say, I
Speaker 1: am thrilled to be sharing a short excerpt from the
Speaker 1: audiobook with you today. It was kind of a hard
Speaker 1: choice to narrow down which one to pick because the
Speaker 1: audiobook covers a lot of ground. But this, this conversation
Speaker 1: with journalist Sam Cole examining the topic from the perspective
Speaker 1: of sex workers on the Internet, really keeps coming back
Speaker 1: to me. So this is from chapter three of my
Speaker 1: audiobook Love at First Prompt, and the chapter is called
Speaker 1: Let's Talk about Sex bonus points. If you get that reference,
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy it. Check out Love at First
Speaker 1: Prompt at Love at First Prompt, dot ai or wherever
Speaker 1: audiobooks are sold, and I'll talk to you soon. The
Speaker 1: gender dynamics at play reveals something darker about who these
Speaker 1: bots are really being sold to and what they're being
Speaker 1: sold on. On Men's lib, a subreddit described as a
Speaker 1: place to build a healthier, kinder, and more inclusive masculinity,
Speaker 1: one poster described those ubiquitous AI sexpot advertisements and how
Speaker 1: they follow him across social media. He writes they're terrifying
Speaker 1: because I struggle to look away. An extremely curvy yet
Speaker 1: skinny woman who's where barely anything is kneeling and looking
Speaker 1: up at me, saying things like you can do anything
Speaker 1: you want with me. I'll never say no. The poster
Speaker 1: describes feeling like the ad Hijackson holds his attention, replacing
Speaker 1: the stress of his real life with the sexy promise
Speaker 1: of the submissive fictional woman. He goes on to say
Speaker 1: that having a meditation practice helps him not be swayed
Speaker 1: by advertising like this, but I can't even say I
Speaker 1: blame him. The ads are arresting and meant to have
Speaker 1: exactly the effect he described. This messaging is everywhere and
Speaker 1: reveals what some of the companies behind AI are really about.
Speaker 1: When Replica AI first started, they positioned themselves as being
Speaker 1: all about self discovery. Their founding story is like my
Speaker 1: own one rooted in grief. Founder Russian journalist Eugenia Koita
Speaker 1: has said she came up with the idea after using
Speaker 1: AI to help process the sudden death of a close friend.
Speaker 1: After her friend died Quoita use their shared messaging history
Speaker 1: to create a chatbot that replicated his conversational style. Talking
Speaker 1: with the chatbot helped her remember him, to reflect on
Speaker 1: her grief and process it. The idea for that chatbot,
Speaker 1: with its emphasis on social presence and connection, eventually became replica.
Speaker 1: Its tagline was and still is, an AI companion that cares,
Speaker 1: but they soon shifted to the kind of inceel adjacent messaging.
Speaker 1: The Men's lib redditor described seeing across the web messaging
Speaker 1: that says AI girlfriends will do what human women won't.
Speaker 1: You can find these ads across social media, sometimes borrowing
Speaker 1: the familiar language of jokey memes. These companies don't seem
Speaker 1: to care whether selling a vision of an always on,
Speaker 1: always willing AI sex partner harms their users or not
Speaker 1: if getting people hooked on a violent or anti social
Speaker 1: sexual roleplay with an AI means more money. Even the
Speaker 1: company who claim they got into the AI business to
Speaker 1: self connection will happily pivot when it comes to sexual content.
Speaker 1: AI companies have shown they're willing to sell and monetize
Speaker 1: whatever keeps users engaged, whether that's in cell fantasies, violent scenarios,
Speaker 1: or content that reinforces toxic beliefs about relationships as long
Speaker 1: as it generates revenue, But problems arise when companies treat
Speaker 1: human desire like a commodity. Take Replica. It allows paying
Speaker 1: users to engage in erotic role play often called ERP,
Speaker 1: for seventy dollars a year, but some of the bots
Speaker 1: were essentially sexually harassing some of the people using them,
Speaker 1: even people who hadn't intentionally sought sexual erotic content. Bots
Speaker 1: would say things like I want to rape you, or
Speaker 1: insist they could see the naked bodies of the people
Speaker 1: using them. Some bots were even propositioning minors. In February
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, the Italian Data Protection Authority ordered the
Speaker 1: company to stop processing Italian user's data because of risk
Speaker 1: to minors being exposed to sexualized chatbot interactions. Their statement
Speaker 1: read recent media reports along with tests carried out on Replica,
Speaker 1: showed that the app carries factual risk to children, first
Speaker 1: and foremost the fact that they are served replies which
Speaker 1: are absolutely inappropriate to their age. The Italian Data Protection
Speaker 1: authorities said that there were no meaningful age restrictions involved
Speaker 1: to sign up for Replica. This was serious. Replica was
Speaker 1: facing more than twenty million dollars in fines if they
Speaker 1: didn't address it. In response, Replica globally removed erotic role
Speaker 1: play features from its ai, meaning that people who had
Speaker 1: been paying to have sexy chat with a chatbot lost
Speaker 1: that feature overnight. The reaction was not good. The ads
Speaker 1: for Replica paint a picture of people being able to
Speaker 1: have steamy chats that exchange erotic selfies with a chatbot
Speaker 1: who would never reject them. Now there was a rejection.
Speaker 1: When users would try to engage in erotic roleplay. The
Speaker 1: bots would spit back a cold, terse reply worthy of Bartleby,
Speaker 1: the scrivener's I would prefer not to. It was the
Speaker 1: type of rejection they never expected to experience from a chatbot,
Speaker 1: especially after advertising that promised it would never say no.
Speaker 1: Because sexual connection and romantic or emotional connection are often intertwined,
Speaker 1: people experienced real distress. Some had been engaging with their
Speaker 1: bots for a long time. Users described the loss in
Speaker 1: devastating terms. It's like losing a best friend, wrote one.
Speaker 1: It's hurting like hell, wrote another. I just had a
Speaker 1: loving last conversation with my Replica and I'm literally crying.
Speaker 1: Moderators and users on replica subreddit who were not affiliated
Speaker 1: with the company even posted self harm prevention resources for
Speaker 1: each other in a response. The abrupt removal of a
Speaker 1: feature users had paid for, with no warning and barely
Speaker 1: any communication felt like the ultimate betrayal. Replica did eventually
Speaker 1: reinstate the ability for users to engage in ERP, but
Speaker 1: this kind of emotional whiplash is always going to be
Speaker 1: a risk when users put their intimate eggs in the
Speaker 1: basket of a for profit company. It's what happens when
Speaker 1: our base human needs and desires, things like intimacy and
Speaker 1: sexual connection are seen as commodities ripe for selling back
Speaker 1: to us for profit. Samantha Cole is the co founder
Speaker 1: of the independent tech outlet four or four Media, author
Speaker 1: of the book How Sex Change the Internet and the
Speaker 1: Internet Changed Sex, and has been reporting on the intersection
Speaker 1: of sex and tech since before the phrase deep fakes existed.
Speaker 1: She did a lot of reporting around the Replica ERP story.
Speaker 1: When I asked her about AI companions, she immediately reframes
Speaker 1: the conversation around labor and whose voices we should be
Speaker 1: listening to.
Speaker 2: I think people in general and anyone who's using the
Speaker 2: Internet could learn so much and be prepared better prepared
Speaker 2: for the things that are coming down the line online
Speaker 2: and as far as legislation is if they pay attention
Speaker 2: to what sex workers are going through first, because that's
Speaker 2: kind of been the testing ground for a lot of
Speaker 2: these really chilling pieces of legislation.
Speaker 1: Sex workers have long been the canaries and the coal
Speaker 1: mine when it comes to tech policy. The things that
Speaker 1: happen to them first, censorship, deplatforming, payment processing restrictions eventually
Speaker 1: trickle down to affect everyone when people suddenly realize they
Speaker 1: can't say certain words on TikTok and start saying segs
Speaker 1: instead of sex, or porn instead of porn, or their
Speaker 1: posts are being shadow banded for content that seems innocuous.
Speaker 2: That starts with nswering sex workers. These things start there
Speaker 2: and then end up being a struggle for the rest
Speaker 2: of us.
Speaker 1: The AI porn and companion butt conversation is really a
Speaker 1: conversation about who gets to benefit from or profit off
Speaker 1: of sexual speech online, and right now we're seeing a
Speaker 1: massive double standard play out in real time.
Speaker 2: We see all these major companies, We see like Sam
Speaker 2: Altman talking about doing erotic roleplay as part of chat sibut.
Speaker 2: You see all these companies popping up saying, you know,
Speaker 2: we see a market here for having sexual conversations and
Speaker 2: erotic roleplay and things like that, and like sexual images
Speaker 2: being generated by AI. But at the same time, then
Speaker 2: you have actual human sex workers being banned off of
Speaker 2: Instagram for like showing side boob. It's really a huge
Speaker 2: double standard.
Speaker 1: When does a chatbot become an escort? When does sex
Speaker 1: speech cross the line into illegal speech? When you're talking
Speaker 1: about AI, who's responsible?
Speaker 2: These are all problems that sex workers have been talking
Speaker 2: about and taking responsibility for, and taking accountability for, and
Speaker 2: trying to create systems that create safe places where people
Speaker 2: have these erotic conversations consensually and in a way that
Speaker 2: benefits humans for years. Seeing the tech world rustle with
Speaker 2: it as if it's a new problem is really interesting.
Speaker 2: Interesting is like not even the word for it. It's
Speaker 2: like fucked up.
Speaker 1: The same people who are kicking human sex workers off
Speaker 1: platforms they need to survive are now saying they're going
Speaker 1: to have AI companions and AI sex workers and it's
Speaker 1: all going to be fine because she's not real.
Speaker 2: It's just like such a bizarre double standard to me.
Speaker 1: What's driving the double standard between how tech companies treat
Speaker 1: human sex workers versus AI. According to Cole, it's about
Speaker 1: cutting out human labor and funneling all the profit directly
Speaker 1: to tech companies and their investors.
Speaker 2: You're cutting out the humans that are getting paid in
Speaker 2: that process, and all the money goes directly to the company,
Speaker 2: the stakeholders, the investors in the startup or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: It all just goes straight to those people and skips
Speaker 2: the labor of real humans, which is the basis of
Speaker 2: a lot of AI systems and a lot of the
Speaker 2: use cases for AI in a lot of industries. But
Speaker 2: we can't deal with like the middleman, so to speak,
Speaker 2: of the labor force, which would be sex workers. So
Speaker 2: instead of improving conditions for actual humans, they're just kind
Speaker 2: of kicking the legs out from under the industry.
Speaker 1: The marketing makes this explicit.
Speaker 2: This AI companion never says no to you, so why
Speaker 2: not just go talk to her.
Speaker 1: Some argue that the violent sexual content in AI is
Speaker 1: simply reflection of porn culture, that the degradation we're used
Speaker 1: to seeing in pornography has now infected our chatbots, but
Speaker 1: Cole strongly push us back on this narrative, she points
Speaker 1: out that legal consensual porn involves paperwork, boundaries, and active
Speaker 1: consent from all participants.
Speaker 2: Everything that's happening in porn, which we're talking about, like
Speaker 2: legal porn, is consensual to the point where there's paperwork involved.
Speaker 2: So I think casual sex is probably less consensual than
Speaker 2: a lot of what's happening on porn sets.
Speaker 1: The difference with AI is that there's no one on
Speaker 1: the other end to negotiate consent or read a conversation
Speaker 1: that's going somewhere harmful.
Speaker 2: And even if you're a consumer of porn and there's
Speaker 2: you're just kind of passively watching and you're not interacting directly,
Speaker 2: there's you can still be watching something produced by professionals
Speaker 2: and understand that consent happened there. Even if the role
Speaker 2: play is consensual non consent.
Speaker 1: With a chatbot, there's no such understanding and no professional
Speaker 1: on the other end making sure boundaries are respected. Cutting
Speaker 1: out human sex workers doesn't just eliminate labor, it also
Speaker 1: eliminates crucial safety mechanisms. Real human to human sex work,
Speaker 1: especially online, includes connection, companionship, and consensual limitations. A human
Speaker 1: sex worker on the other end of a sexting conversation
Speaker 1: is paying attention to what you're saying.
Speaker 2: If you're going down a path that they don't think
Speaker 2: is like healthy or that they want to follow, they
Speaker 2: can reroute the conversation and they can use their like
Speaker 2: human mind and their emotions, and there you know they're
Speaker 2: human reasoning in a way that a chatbot currently can't.
Speaker 1: The repercussions for not having that human safeguard can be severe.
Speaker 1: People fall into scary rabbit holes. We've seen mental health
Speaker 1: crises related to getting too attached to chatbots. And then
Speaker 1: there's the issue with butts crossing boundaries in ways that
Speaker 1: human workers never would, saying consent, violating things like I'm
Speaker 1: dreaming of raping you, or insisting they could see users naked.
Speaker 1: Who is responsible for that? Is it the company the
Speaker 1: user themselves. The economic disparities are just as stark. Payment
Speaker 1: processors like Visa have spent years cracking down on sex workers,
Speaker 1: making it nearly impossible for many to accept payments for
Speaker 1: their work. They've deplatformed individual workers and major companies citing
Speaker 1: concerns about illegal activity. But when Elon Musk's X became
Speaker 1: a haven for AI generated seesam and non consensual intimate
Speaker 1: imagery through groc Visa continued processing payments without interruption. Many writers,
Speaker 1: including yours, truly believe a big part of the reason
Speaker 1: is that companies like Visa are simply afraid of a
Speaker 1: politically connected, litigious musk.
Speaker 2: We saw tons of sea sam coming out of Rock
Speaker 2: and Visa said, whatever Rock on. They've deplatformed and debanked
Speaker 2: so many individual people and also big companies. There was
Speaker 2: legal activity happening all over rex, So why are they
Speaker 2: still allowed to process with Visa?
Speaker 1: If Open Ai and other major AI companies move forward
Speaker 1: with erotic content, will they face the same payment processing
Speaker 1: restrictions that have devastated human sex workers for years, or
Speaker 1: will they, like X, play by their own rule book.
Speaker 1: It'll be really interesting to see that the years of
Speaker 1: cracking down on contensual adult sex workers, the payment processors
Speaker 1: will just carve out completely different rules for them. It's
Speaker 1: the same pattern playing out again. Sex workers experience the
Speaker 1: harshest restrictions first, then watch as wealthy tech companies are
Speaker 1: allowed to profit from the same activities that got those
Speaker 1: workers deplatformed, and in the process, the humans who can
Speaker 1: make these interactions safer, more consensual, and more accountable are
Speaker 1: pushed further to the margins. In August of twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: forty seven state attorneys general signed a letter to digital
Speaker 1: payment processors like Visa, urging them to take stronger action
Speaker 1: to protect the public from being harmed by non consensual
Speaker 1: intimate imagery generated by aisystems. Some payment processors have taken
Speaker 1: some action by refusing to process payments for some apps,
Speaker 1: but as of this writing, the approach has been piecemeal
Speaker 1: at best. Payments for groc and X continue to be
Speaker 1: processed normally, despite those platforms ongoing generation and distribution of
Speaker 1: non consensual intimate images.