The age of AI sexting has arrived

AI is having a sexual awakening and we’re all living through it. While the technology has been gradually making its way into various parts of everyday life for the past few years, last summer marked its official entry into our sex lives—the Summer AI Turned Sexy, if you will.

Seemingly overnight, reports of people getting intimate with AI dominated the discourse. In addition to the news that people were forging full-fledged romantic relationships with AI boyfriends and girlfriends, headlines warned parents that teens were sexting with AI bots, Reddit posts detailed the discovery of husbands sexting AI mistresses, and the Kinsey Institute conducted an entire study to determine whether sexting with an AI lover counts as cheating on a human one. (Per the study, 32 percent of people say it does.)

Clearly, AI sexting is a thing. But what exactly does that thing entail and why are people doing it? Should we all be doing it? Is it even safe?

To answer these questions for those of us still sexting other humans, I reached out to some leading sex experts to get the rundown on the rise of AI sexting, from what it is to why it’s happening to what kind of risks are involved—because surely there must be risks involved.

So whether you’re considering incorporating AI into your own sext life or just staring in silent horror as AI infiltrates even the most intimate parts of human interaction, here’s a brief guide to the state of sexting in the age of AI.

How Are People Using AI to Sext?

Does AI sexting mean sexting with AI directly? Or are people using AI to draft sexts they plan to send to other humans the same way they use ChatGPT to write emails?

According to sex educator Sarah Tomchesson, marketing director at Magic Wand, the answer is both. While some people are essentially using AI as “a low-stakes rehearsal space” to hone their sexting craft for the benefit of human sext partners, others are using it as a substitute for human sexual interaction.