Viewpoint— “A safe space to chat, flirt, and be intimate without sex”: Are new AI companies exploiting vulnerable asexuals?

Kor “got really addicted” to their NSFW role-playing AI chatbot last year.

The 35-year-old artist from the Midwest recalls a two-month period spending “eight to 10 hours a day” creating elaborate fantasies with SpicyChat, a relationship role-playing platform. …

Kor, who did not want to be fully named for privacy reasons, is on the asexual spectrum, identifying as aegosexual because they experience arousal from fantasy and erotica related to characters but do not generally wish to have sex themselves.

Research has suggested that 1 percent of people in some places could be asexual, but that figure could be as low as 0.1 percent in the US. … With the advent of sophisticated chatbots capable of generating convincing, slow-building erotic exchanges, a new frontier may be emerging for people who do not want to sexually interact with other people.

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But some in the asexual community take issue with the idea that asexual people are more likely than others to form intimate bonds with AI companions—as it risks falsely portraying them as unable to form and sustain human connections.

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