Muses, not Sirens – Motivation in the Era of AI-Generated Girlfriends

It’ll start with generative pornography. First in images, then in video, then with robust AI-generated personalities that are customized to their user.

The male sex drive is a powerful motive force. We have many examples of Napoleons being made by burning desire for Josephines, but very few of the opposite. Men, arguably, do just about everything from the desire to distinguish themselves and earn the love of women. Libido is not for the bedroom, libido invents light bulbs and builds companies and forms nation-states.

This essay is primarily about motivation for men. Men are already struggling pretty mightily right now in the face of pornography addictions, social isolation, and record levels of sexual deprivation.

Faced with the inevitability of irresistibly attractive AI-generated women – paired with hyper-customized personalities to please the user – men will have the option to obtain many of the benefits of a relationship with a woman, without having to put in the work (approaching women in person, getting in shape, making enough money or being competent enough in life to have women actually desire them, etc). Already we see men in the developed world pouring their libido into video games and pornography.

We should not imagine the future of AI generated sexual/romantic partners to be a pitiful, depressing attempt at replacement for female companionship. We look down on Replika users (the AI “girlfriend erotic chat simulator” that some men fell in love with) or LovePlus users (the Japanese game where men date and physically interact with a virtual female companion), and on today’s hikikomori (the Japanese are much further down the girlfriend-replacement path than the West – I explore that in another article). These are mostly men with no romantic prospects, with little ability to compete in the world.

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