What you're seeing is artificial constructs that give men and women all the "good" parts with none of the "bad" parts. People get all up in arms about the specifics, but the core of it is a very dangerous precedent where people stop even trying to relate to each other, because a machine can give them their perfect fantasy. It's a siren song that will eventually enslave them.

And yes, men and women have generally differing ideas of what the "perfect fantasy" is. Get over it. We're not rational beings, and we want what we want.

Men and women stopped relating to each other with the advent of social media. AI is a consequence, not a cause.

No, I take that back. Not social media. It was the widespread availability of effective contraception. #WTFHappenedIn1971.

I might not put it quite the same way but I had similar thoughts about the contrast in which these things are often discussed.

Maybe it's not all quite that way though? The film Her is pretty similar to what's described in this article? Eerily so in many ways in fact. That protagonist is male.

For some reason your comments made me wonder about a gender-reversed take on Ex Machina. I don't mean that sarcastically, I just think it might be interesting what a good-faith exploration of some of the same questions might produce, as Ex Machina is so heavily focused on gender dynamics. Maybe you'd end up with essentially the same film though?

Well this comment sounds like a bunch of made up nonsense!

Really? How about the attitudes towards vibrators versus fleshlights?

Another excellent example.

Woman using vibrator: empowered and engaging in self-care.

Man using fleshlight: sick and disgusting, a pathetic sh*tstain that can’t get sexual relief any other way.

I'm not sure how feminism screams?

Laughing at the idea that feminism is the main or even a primary antagonist here, and not all the other men laughing at virgin NEETs failing their biological imperative.

Total anecdata, none of my socialist female friends who hate AI care that men are using "AI girlfriends". It's not new. Replika has been out for awhile. They much prefer the system where these weirdos message a chatbot rather than stalk Instagram.

The last and honestly funniest part is you think society doesn't judge women who end up failing their biological imperative. I guess the term "spinster" has been out of vogue for a bit, but still. "Crazy cat lady" would be the modern equivalent. I'm sure some nice young person will come up with a postmodern term involving these AI companions. The message it's giving is definitely not "empowerment"

> The last and honestly funniest part is you think society doesn't judge women who end up failing their biological imperative.

You must be a boomer. They’re the only ones I have ever heard this from.

GenX here, and I haven’t heard that from any of my cohort or younger. My wife and I are DINKs straddling the threshold of our sixth decade, and have received NO pushback from being child free. And the younger people are considerably more progressive than even we are.