Uncanny Valley of the Dolls: Creepy and Explicit AI Girlfriends Are Here

The chicks are coming home to roost, and we all should have seen them coming.

Today, I read a fascinating article called “We Can’t Compete With AI Girlfriends” about new AI-enabled avatar apps where a young man can create a cartoonish version of a beautiful girl, and keep her trapped in a phone in his back pocket, available for his pleasure at all times.

I work in technology and web development, so I’ve been watching AI for years in its various forms and uses, but this particular application of AI is something I haven’t paid much attention to until now.

Forget falling in love with a text-based LLM (Large Language Model) app that simply pats you on the back when you write smart things and ask good questions. This is a whole new level (or depth) of depravity, where, as Evie Magazine says, “AI girlfriends never argue, complain, or get bored of [men], while real girls continually disappoint.”

Gamer bros in basements everywhere, rejoice! There are now Belles for Incels!

Brave new world? Or depraved new world?

The article can be summed up in two main points:

First: AI girlfriends are bad for women. They exemplify unrealistic beauty standards, feeding men images of flawless, hot babes that are now completely customizable, introducing the equally concerning challenge of unrealistic emotional standards.

Second: AI girlfriends are bad for men, too, by replacing intimacy with women with artificial intimacy with computers or phone screens. This, in turn, hurts women even more by giving them anxiety and body dysmorphia.

(Think: “My AI girlfriend is a blonde… and a brunette… and a ginger. You just have one hair color? Lame.”)

These are all fair points.

I’m not surprised that a woman’s magazine published this. I’m not surprised that a woman wrote this. I’m not surprised by the tone of the writing, or even the fear and the anxiety surrounding this whole issue.

I am surprised, however, that women are freaking out about this now.

In other words, I’m surprised that they’re surprised.

With “AI girlfriends,” we are now in totally uncharted territory. But video-game female avatars with absurdly ample bosoms who can also talk to you were obviously the next logical step after pornography. This was bound to happen.

If you search online for “AI girlfriend,” brace yourself for what you’re about to find. (Really, I mean this is a sincere warning: the results are shocking.)

Creepy, explicit, and totally predictable

The images and screenshots alone (even the less explicit ones) are enough to raise an eyebrow. I’ll spare you the graphic details (I didn’t click much further than a few screenshots), but even with all that, AI girlfriends as a concept are not shocking at all.

Creepy? Yes. Explicit? Yes (well, they can be if you make them that way).

But surprising? No, not at all.

Virtual AI sex bots aren’t a mysterious new threat to women: they’re a completely predictable outcome of human nature, cultural double standards, and decades of both sexes indulging in fantasy, with the addition of next-generation technology. That’s it.

Note: Before anyone gets their panties in a twist, let me state explicitly (heh): I don’t condone AI sex bots or pornography. I’m not defending them on moral grounds. I’m simply making observations in a culture where pornography, like it or not, exists, is legal, and is prolific.

Men are simple beasts

Deep down, men are very, very simple creatures: we are sexual beings, we like women, and we like beauty. We want women who are beautiful, friendly, and open to our romantic advances. If we can’t find this in real life, we simply look elsewhere.

At a basic level, that’s where the demand for pornography comes from in the first place: it provides “access” to friendly, beautiful women who are always open to our advances, no matter our income, romantic prowess, or physical build.

Women in pornography never ask for anything, and they can’t ever say “no.”

Having that kind of access is intoxicating and addictive. Even if this “isn’t real,” a lot of men will still take that deal anyway—it’s real enough to serve as a substitute. The fact that we can’t actually reach out and touch the ladies we’re ogling is irrelevant.

“Real women aren’t like that,” real women will say, often defensively.

Well, that kind of claim doesn’t make any sense at all. Those aren’t “real women” on the screen? Of course they are. Porn “actresses” are human beings with a heartbeat just like you and me. You could shake their hands if you met them in person.

But this unfair complaint about men desiring women who “aren’t real women” is actually about to become a self-fulfilling prophecy in a big way.

Just look at these “AI girlfriends”—they look totally, embarrassingly fake. They’re cartoonish… even goofy.

Whereas pornography shows men real female bodies without personality, AI girlfriends show men fake female bodies with personality.

Also, I know women don’t want to hear this, but AI girlfriends are just showing you what men want at an even deeper level: beautiful women who give them compliments, don’t fight back, or argue.

Whether you like it or not—all moral qualms aside—this just makes sense.

Today, as an exercise, I found a (non-pornographic) website and created an “iGirl” by simply clicking around a few times without creating an account. It started out by asking what I wanted her to look like, then it gave me a “tweak personality” section with sliders like this:

• Shy vs. Flirty

• Pessimistic vs. Optimistic

• Ordinary vs. Mysterious

I know this tame example is not exactly the “AI girlfriend” from the Evie article that women are afraid of. But still, isn’t this almost… precious? Shy and flirty? Those are extremely feminine traits, which men find cute and endearing.

These aspects of a woman’s personality are very human indeed, and men love them all, to differing degrees. Now, I bailed out of building my own AI girlfriend at this stage. I don’t need to see anymore… but at this point in the process, I was struck with an uncomfortable question that I think deserves an answer: don’t dating apps for real people do this EXACT kind of thing?

Tweak your iGirl’s personality: Do you prefer shy or flirty?

When people sign up for a dating app (ostensibly created for real men and real women to meet in real life), do they have the ability to filter their matches by age, ethnicity, education level, height, body type (read: weight), income, language, religion, interests, and more?

(I’ve never used an app like this, but based on my research, the answer is: yes, they do.)

Then why is customization creepy with an AI girlfriend but not with a real girlfriend?

Also, in a sense, I think this is actually good news: it shows that men aren’t PURELY carnal beasts, and don’t SOLELY want raw, explicit sexual content. They, too, want a companion. How can you fault a man for wanting a “Shy, optimistic, ordinary” girl? Aren’t there about 50 million single ladies in America who would describe themselves this way? Maybe there’s hope for us all!

Okay, so it’s still a fake robotic companion that says “yes” to everything and has no free will… but I think the point still stands.

Some women may look at all of this in confusion and say, “So what is it that men really want, anyway?” The simple answer to this is so obvious it’s screaming right at anyone with the audacity to ask.

BOTH. Men want both.

Men want a beautiful woman (which pornography promises) with a personality (which an AI girlfriend promises). Add those together, and that’s pretty close to what men want—all men.

Yes, even your dad, your brothers, and your uncles.

But does such a thing even exist in real life? Can it exist? Is it possible to have both? Can a man have a woman who fulfills his carnal urges and is also his friend?

Yes, of course, it can exist: not just online, but in real life, too!

That’s what marriage is supposed to be.

Marriage was made for the mutual fulfilment of both a real man and a real woman. A married relationship offers joy, beauty, personality, friendship, comedy, and yes, even visceral, erotic, sizzling sex. (In addition to more mundane but still important things like financial security, physical protection, etc.)

When you remove the marital arrangement from the picture, though, OF COURSE, men are going to try to satisfy their desires elsewhere. Rage at them all you want, but it’s pointless: when you take away the relationship, all that remains is relations. And that can get kind of ugly.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks

To a certain extent, AI girlfriends are just a more technologically advanced version of the flipside of what women do themselves, but never talk about. Women love to watch movies with “fake” men who don’t look or act like men do in real life, and they love to read books and steamy romance novels that are implicitly pornographic if not explicitly.

By all means, “Let her who is without sin cast the first stone,” but come on, ladies. Jesus scribbled in the sand for you, too. Let’s please be fair and call it like it is:

• Romance novels = pornography for women.

• Chick flicks = AI boyfriends.

Do women not watch movies filled with simmering sexual tension and wish they were “the one” Clark Gable or Colin Firth makes love to with his eyes, speaking words that men today would find ghastly, nonsensical, and effeminate?

Do women not fantasize about gorgeous men who are tall, tanned, and well-dressed, who have a muscular physique, and also happen to be billionaire medical doctors who went to Ivy League colleges and were captains of the football team and the prom king?

Do women not pine for a ridiculously artificial sexy hunk paying an inordinate amount of attention to the lowly, meek country girl? And do women who have lived in boring cities their entire lives not also fantasize that they are that sweet, shy country girl in the apron and bare feet, even though that has no bearing on reality?

Women want the burly man with the chiseled chin and neatly trimmed beard, who went to the big city, saw the whole world, made his fortune, and is now coming back for her—yes, her—because only she can satisfy him.

This is pure fantasy: it’s as ludicrous as a hallucination on nitrous oxide. And yet… how is this any different than a man wanting an AI girlfriend?

Also, the man in this city-dwelling woman’s fantastical, dreamy romance need not take off his clothes to be erotic. (Although he often does—I’ve seen some remarkably smutty books for sale right in front of children at major booksellers like Barnes and Noble. Unlike pornography, though, they’re not hidden behind a counter or covered in a dark, sealed bag.)

Women constantly hound men about “the male gaze,” telling them they’re just awful for their unattainable standards of beauty, unceasingly shaming them for desiring to see naked women.

Look, we get it: women think men who look at porn are gross. Guess what? Men got over caring what women think about this a long, long time ago—your opinion hasn’t reduced access to pornography in any meaningful way.

To put it starkly, men have decided: “So what?”

“The 6-6-6 Rule” (Not the mark of the beast)

Here’s a dirty secret that women know to be true, but aren’t admitting: being in a physical relationship with a real woman is a LOT of very hard work. Every married man knows this. Wives know this, too. See for yourself: there’s a ton of Instagram videos out there of women saying, “My husband is a champ for putting up with me.”

It’s apparently getting harder and harder. You don’t have to search much online to see that young men are now saying women are almost entirely impossible to please. And that’s before they even have a CHANCE to enter a relationship with them.

You want to talk about an “unrealistic standard?” Great googly-moogly: Have you heard of “The 6-6-6 Rule?” (Thank GOD I got married before the dating apps era!)

It goes like this: women are expecting (or demanding) that:

• He must be six feet tall

• He must have six-pack abs

• He must make a six-figure income

Ladies: if this is true (I say this as a man who’s been married for almost twenty years, so I don’t know firsthand—I’m hearing it from other men), this is completely insane.

This is, in essence, a “beauty standard” as unfair as any men have ever held for women. Yes, men have unrealistic expectations of women. But everybody talks about it so loudly and so often that it’s almost not worth repeating here.

How would women feel if men had a “B-B-B Rule” that insisted women must be:

• Busty

• Beautiful

• Barely legal?

That would be offensive and absurd, and men who say this would be mocked loudly and often (and they often are, when they do actually talk like this).

Also, I ran some quick math: the number of men who fit the criteria for the 6-6-6 rule is infinitesimally small: only about 1 in every 4,000 men fit all three requirements, which is a staggeringly tiny 0.02–0.05% of American men.

This whole 6-6-6 thing might be totally fake. It might be a joke. I don’t know.

But I DO know that guys are finding women so discriminating in their choices of real men that they’re swearing off relationships with real women altogether.

Is this good? No. Obviously, it’s horrible.

But is it understandable? Yes.

If women are going to say “You must be this tall to ride,” then draw a line so high that very few men can reach it even before they get to know them… then they’re pushing a lot of men into a world where boobs exist only in bits and bytes.

The dog guarding the henhouse

I know many families who keep chickens in their backyards: a few hens for laying eggs, and a rooster to keep the brood going. In almost every case, however, I’ve noticed that these families also have a dog.

Initially, I found this very confusing.

Don’t dogs chase and eat birds in the wild? Why on earth would you keep a dog and its food in the same yard?

And yet, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say: “Our dog killed our chickens.” In fact, I’ve heard people say things like “Our dog protects our chickens and keeps the foxes and coyotes away.”

I wondered how this was possible until I realized that keeping dogs and chickens together works if (and only if) the dog is properly fed.

Imagine going on vacation for a week or two, though, and forgetting to feed your dog. How long would it take until that starving dog cooped up in your backyard starts admiring those chicken breasts?

I’m not trying to be grotesque: I’m being realistic. If you starve your dog—a carnivorous animal—for long enough, he will eventually attack your hens. That’s just his canine nature.

Similarly, (and I know, I know… some people will inevitably say: “See this just proves that men are animals! Ha!”) men have desires. Healthy, normal sexual desires. It’s clear that most women have absolutely no idea just how strong this desire is.

A man’s sexual urge is one of the strongest forces in the universe: entire empires have been forged from the dust by powerful men, just to impress women. Men will climb mountains, conquer nations, and tame nature, all for the hand of the right woman.

Men crave women.

Men HUNGER for women.

Men will kill other men for women.

Men will do almost anything to satisfy their desire for women.

Over the years, I’ve read enough true tales of survival where men exploring the ends of the earth experience a horrible disaster and are pushed beyond the limits of reason, politeness, and sanity.

One thing I know for sure is: if you starve a man long enough, he will eventually eat his own boot leather.

His desire is not to resort to cannibalizing his own clothes: he desires Penne Arrabbiata.

He wants a hot dinner that is real, substantial, and satisfying. Absent a spicy Italian meal, though, he will stuff anything carbon-based in his face hole in an attempt to quench his hunger pangs.

The same is true for men with women!

He wants a hot woman who is real, substantial, and satisfying. Absent a spicy Italian woman, though, he will stuff anything silicon (or even silicone) in his heart hole in an attempt to quench his relationship pangs.

When there’s no beautiful woman in real life who admires him and welcomes his advances, is it any surprise that AI will swoop in and fill the gap of men’s desire?

It shouldn’t be.

Pornography is poison, but some women act like marriage is too

Pornography is often called a societal poison. I don’t disagree. But here’s the thing: it’s been tolerated for decades. It is everywhere.

And this criticism ONLY ever goes one way: men are shamed for looking at porn all the time. Women look at porn, too, but I almost never see any criticism of women about this.

Stranger still, women don’t just consume porn… they make it!

Who exactly do women think men are looking at on their screens, anyway?

Women create porn, women star in porn, and women profit from porn financially, but only men are called dirtbags for buying or consuming the porn that women create.

And now, they’re making it out to be so much worse because it’s virtual and fake? Are anime characters with body parts of unusual size worse than real women who literally take off all their clothes and commit sexual acts in front of a camera for money?

And if pornography is bad and hurts women (and I believe it is), why do women keep making it? Also, complaining now, when the inevitable next step in technology has arrived, feels a little late and bizarrely arbitrary.

But think about this: at a base level, pornography, AI girlfriends, swimsuit editions of sports magazines—all of these are just a manifestation of something good.

Man’s desire for woman is inherently good. Yes, even a man’s desire for a naked woman is good. In the Garden of Eden, man and woman were naked, and they knew no shame.

Men’s desire today might be expressed the wrong way, but you still have to separate the two: the expression may not be good, but the desire is good.

It’s God-given.

So, what is the right outlet for a man’s sexual desire? Ultimately, it’s marriage, of course. The spiritual, social, and societal relationship between a man and a woman.

Until recently, that’s what the end goal of “dating” was—marriage. Dating forever without getting married would have been seen as ridiculous, like an astronaut who never leaves the flight simulator. If you never ride the rocket, what was all that training for?

Yet I keep seeing polls and surveys over and over again about how much women today hate men, never want to get married, don’t want to become mothers, and essentially despise everything about masculinity.

What is a man to do?

Men want to get married, but women don’t want to marry them.

It’s an impossible situation; a perfect case of “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

It may sound crass, but if an AI girlfriend can look beautiful, tell a man he’s handsome and strong, and even provide sexual banter—and if she doesn’t fight or argue with him—it’s absolutely no wonder why men would sign up for this. It’s a dream come true.

Men are increasingly deciding that the flesh-and-blood version of women is just too demanding, or even dangerous. Did you know there are now phone apps coming out that women use to post photos of men to “warn others” about them, and shame them publicly? That is a huge risk in real life, but I can’t see an AI companion doing this.

Also, wouldn’t women sign up for an AI boyfriend if given a chance? Would a woman not sign up for an open-shirted Gaston who tells her she’s beautiful each morning as she puts on her makeup?

How about a handsome animated prince who never complains when she burns dinner, runs late, or forgets to pick up the dry cleaning?

What about a rugged, virtual Harrison Ford who listens to every single angry rant she has about other women—and men—yet never interrupts or tries to fix her problems, but just makes her feel heard?

Real men, the kind with hearts and bones, really don’t want to do any of these things. We hate this crap. It’s annoying and embarrassing. We do it because we love women. It’s the price we pay sometimes to be in a relationship with them. But an AI version of a man could do this all day long and never tire of it.

Men want to do this for our wives about as much as women want to wear an “I Dream of Jeannie” ensemble and call us “Master” all day.

Neither of these desires is wrong, or bad… but they are unrealistic.

I do sympathize with the women saying that they “can’t compete with AI girlfriends.” But you could say that about pornography more generally, or movie stars, or supermodels, or, really, all manner of women.

For example, I’m sure women are tired of hearing that “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.” Partly because it’s overwrought, but also because most women can’t compete with someone like that.

Here’s my prediction: the technology exists to create an AI version of Sydney Sweeney that laughs at your jokes, flirts with you, and never storms off in a huff. Men are going to make this happen. Actually, it’s already here now: as the Evie article explains:

“…one Snapchat influencer, Caryn Marjorie, makes $100,000 a week by charging users $1 a minute to chat with the AI version of herself.”

With that being the case, I’m telling you now: you haven’t heard the last of Sydney Sweeney. She is coming to a pocket near you soon.

But you know what? Men have feelings, too. We also get tired of being compared to impossible ideals we could never match, yet are expected to.

If ever there was a version of a woman’s ideal of a man, a Sydney Sweeney equivalent, if you will, there is an unattainable “standard bearer” of masculinity that men are tired of hearing about—the endlessly infuriating stuffed suit that women find so inexplicably charming: the dreaded Mr. Darcy.

We are beyond tired of hearing about that stuffy, British fopdoodle that women—even today, long after Victorian times—still find somehow hypnotic.

But here’s the thing: at least Sydney Sweeney is real! Mr. Darcy never was real! He is a completely fictional character, invented from pure imagination, by a woman for women. Dare I say he’s an “artificial” character? An avatar of sorts?

To use Evie Magazine’s own language against them: men can’t compete with literary boyfriends.

You don’t hear us complaining about it, though. In fact, I’ll bet you didn’t even know this bugs us. But it does.

Are women really so superior in their desires?

Ladies, do you mean to tell us you wouldn’t immediately sign up for an AI version of Mr. Darcy that whispers, “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you,” in your ear at night?

I don’t believe you. You’d swoon right on that fainting couch.

In my opinion, that isn’t explicit.

It isn’t totally predictable.

But it is definitely creepy.

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