Cavorting with chatbots?! Survey reveals whether people think sexting with AI is cheating

It’s official, the gates have been breached: AI is hitting the gays, and hard!

The LGBTQ+ community has always used technology for connection, from Gay.com to Craigslist personals. With that history in mind, it should come as little surprise that AI programs like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini are quickly re-defining the ways we interact with each other.

Last month, an article in Pride Source called out gay clubs, bathhouses and even RuPaul’s Drag Race for their purported use of AI-generated images in promotional images on social media.

And back in January, a Phoenix, Arizona gay bar faced blowback for rolling out MOTHR, a chat bot designed to answer “questions about events, shows, [and] drinks.”

How about we take this to the next level?

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Of course, the worst offender might just be Grindr, who debuted a $350 per month AI wingman that seeks to eliminate friction from the [app] experience.

But menial tasks, organization, and promotion aren’t the only, ahem, services that gays are turning to their robot friends for. The gay sex bot boom is upon us!

What does that mean for our relationships?

If the results from a recent study by Vantage Point Counseling Services are any indication, things are about to get a LOT more complicated.

According to their research, more than 28% of adults surveyed were in “at least one intimate or romantic relationship with an AI.”

Interestingly enough, of that 28%, more than half of respondents were also in a “successful romantic human relationship” IRL as well. That means they’re juggling a chat bae and a real bae at the same time.

Busy!

Considering that AI chatbots are already capable of sexting and dirty talk—and only getting more advanced— engaging with them romantically raises ethical questions. Mainly: If you’re in a relationship with a human, but you’re getting side action from a chatbot, is it cheating?

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Based on the survey results, people are split.

While 49% of respondents said having an intimate relationship with an AI was “cheating and unacceptable,” 33% thought it shouldn’t be considered cheating. A surprising 17% said it was an “acceptable” form of cheating, whatever that means!

The divide falls along generational lines.

Although AI users between the ages of 18-29-years-old were the most vocal opponents of having a romantic relationship with both a chatbot and a human, users ages 60 and up were the most open to that type of relationship.

Further complicating the dilemma, the study found “more than half of Americans claim to have some kind of relationship with an AI system.”

We should mention, however, the study is not without its flaws. Its findings were based on a small sample size of 1,012 adults in the U.S., and reflect a wide range of age groups, income and orientations.

At this point, the answer is unclear, and sure to evolve as AI technologies become bigger parts of our daily lives.

According to Vantage Point Counseling Services, “relationships, whether human or artificial, can be spaces of discovery.”

But we feel compelled to add: all spaces of discovery aren’t equal. When it comes to fostering connections, IRL > AI.

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