Getting emotionally invested in an AI seems to me like it would go hand in hand with giving up on human relationships. I'm pretty sure men are more likely to do that than women.
I...uh, have you asked a woman whether this is true? Like, ask the nearest woman to confirm this and report back.
Most women I have spoken to about this can get attention generally, but very little of it is desirable attention.
There's also a bias I've noticed where people don't consider women that they don't personally find attractive when talking about these things - they're basically invisible.
The premise is not true for many women. And even if it were, it's not necessarily any easier to get attention from someone you are interested in yourself. And women deal with social anxiet, fears of making themselves vulnerable, self-confidence, body image, etc. around pursuing or initiating relationships just as anyone.
Yes, I believe that women experience this particular problem less than men do, but that doesn't mean that women don't have just as many problems on balance.
The patriarchy is alive and well, and I'm pretty sure it's still harder to be a woman than it is to be a man.
But, if you want to examine why men are expected to be more likely to pay for intimate relationships with AI, I think this area is relevant to the discussion.
No one is suggesting that young women don’t struggle whatsoever. What they are suggesting, is that they don’t struggle to the extent that most would consider buying a paid AI companion.
that doesn't contradict what he said - just that the "undesirable" attention is still more desirable than an AI boyfriend could offer. Whereas an AI girlfriend can tautologically offer more desirable attention than the zero attention a significant percentage of men are able to achieve.
Whether they should be more comfortable (given the privacy problems with these services) is a different matter.
How long before your AI girlfriend is sussing out your feelings and desires in the interest of figuring out how you can most effectively be advertised to?
Asking for a friend.
You can test this yourself trivially on any dating app pretending to be a woman. In fact this is the purest form of the test, because there's 0 chance of anyone else misreporting their experiences.
> Most women I have spoken to about this can get attention generally, but very little of it is desirable attention.
I think in the dating market, most attention for both sexes is undesirable. However, since women receive comparatively more attention, they are much more likely to receive at least some attention that is desirable.
> There's also a bias I've noticed where people don't consider women that they don't personally find attractive when talking about these things - they're basically invisible.
Wait till you find out how big that bias is in the other direction.
It’s shameful that this self-deprecating idea seems to have made it to the mainstream, and even worse that young men are believing it.
> Are said she believes that reflects a gender-based slant — social media platforms freely allow sex-related ads only if the intended audience is men.
So when you've got a huge hungry audience, willing to pay money, the platforms are incentivized to enforce their rules about ads unequally. Content and apps geared towards women, or gay men, are such a small piece of the pie by comparison that there's less incentive to look the other way.
The companies being accused of this unequal enforcement, of course, have a long history of doing things for no other reason than they can make a little extra money on it by not respecting their users. It's entirely believable.
Sorry, we're talking about Instagram, an app we know puts huge targets on women, especially young women! I have no idea what you're talking about here about nicheness. Fashion products alone are worth way more than the entire porn industry. Not including beauty, skincare, cosmetic surgery, wellness/cleansing, etc...
Whereas men are simpler creatures attracted to any woman that is visually hot.
The former is a lot harder to implement than the latter.
For the huge demand among men - it's best to think about an AI girlfriend as an alternative to going to the strip club.
Sure, some guys go to strip clubs for just staring at naked women. But a huge (mostly unacknowledged) part of the appeal is the short-term companionship mixed in. The flirting, the ego stroking, all of it, just an attractive woman taking an interest in you and talking with you. Lots of guys I have talked to have had the experience of one of their buddies getting too drunk and "spilling their guts" to a stripper. That's not a thing that happens if you're just there to stare at bewbs.
In Asia, hostess clubs operate much more along the lines of this idea of emotional fulfillment. Strip clubs are part of the overall entertainment service sector, but really focus more on the bewbs aspect. In the West it's much more mixed in together instead of in two separate types of businesses.
Also, even if we were to call it a "relationship", I'd say it's a lot easier to cater to the typical male wants of a "relationship" through the current (and near future) state of AI than the typical female wants.
Disclaimer: The usual stuff about "not all men/women etc. etc."
I wouldn't be surprised if the overall market size (in users, not dollars) for all types of "relationship substitutes" for men is simply far, far larger than the market for women, even though Twilight and 50 Shades are themselves huge. For every 1 female erotica fan out there, I bet there are 10 or maybe 100 male users of porn or OnlyFans. I would also guess that the amount of money spent by men is at least a multiple of the amount spent by women. If I was an entrepreneur going into a market where, say, there were 100x potential male users and maybe 3x potential male dollars, I'd be a fool not to at least initially target men.
It's a lot easier to implement an AI version of a strip club or hostess club than an AI version of Twilight or 50SoG.
Another angle is go down the rabbit hole of online dating app disparity, women (under a certain age and bodyweight) can have a short term boyfriend and attention essentially immediately and in an unlimited manner. Partly driven by coolidge effect in men's sexual desires (men as a group have near unlimited desire for novelty and therefore consume any/all available supply except that which is not generally/widely desirable).
Women already have a near proxy too. OnlyFans or an IG + cashapp account can mean she gets more from men than she could one man, and gives less that a wife would have had to in the past. An AI Boyfriend would have to give the things that women (on average) desire from men, which tends to be more like protection, resources/money, and status/social dominance.
AI Girlfriends work because men tend to be driven towards visual things, and novelty.
Things don't have to apply to all men/women in order for things to be very lopsided.
Women already have a dating simulator. It's called instagram and dating apps.
Edited to add: not to mention a/s/l and dick pics! AI boyfriend would NEVER do that, while in a dating app your average woman would probably get that fairly regularly.
That's why i said insta/dating apps is a simulator for women. They can interact with "perfect men" on these apps. the ideal firefighter with a golden retriever with a perfect relationship with his mom on tuesday and drake/blue check sliding into their dms on insta setting somthing up on friday.
it's a simulator in the sense that women don't get marriage/commitment/a family from these "perfect men".
I'd be curious if that's actually true. After all, there's porn for something purely based on looks, and where OnlyFans models make most of their money is by combining the looks with simulated emotional intimacy. Are the popular AI girlfriends purely sexbots, or is a primary part of their appeal that they offer simulacra of intimacy?
I'm not sure if research has really addressed evolution of women's expressions of sexuality over time and changing social norms. Even in the romance genre, what's considered appropriate in terms of consent and fantasy has evolved quite a bit over the last 40 years. That's true in terms of porn aimed at straight men as well, though not necessarily in the same directions.
But anyhow, how would AI boyfriends continue what's popular about romance -- the customization (subgenre for every taste), the story, and the happily ever after or happy for now for the woman? The last part in particular doesn't seem to be relevant/considered in the AI girlfriend discussion, it's just not part of the structure.
Also, dating sims seem to be popular in some geographies and not others; I know nothing about them, so there's got to be a story there...
Romance plots involve an intricate and complicated progression of emotions. Lonely guys need a lot less and don't mind skipping the romancing part of the romantic experience.
Weird that a tool that is very well suited for a demographic is actively ignoring it, because it just isn’t good enough to fill the need yet.
[Example comparison: I know for a fact that popular romance publishing houses have straight up algorithmic-level demands of books published with them. Kiss must happen by page X. First sex must happen by chapter Y. Happily Ever After is mandatory, etc. These publishing houses make huge money, maybe the most well-earning genre in all of books.]