When AI Porn Turns Anti-Porn Messaging Into the Sales Pitch

And how the Christian response to porn is more important than ever.

Pexels/MART PRODUCTION

“Do you prefer your porn with a lot of abuse and human trafficking, or would you rather talk to an AI?”

That is not a hypothetical question–that is a direct quote from Steve Jones, who runs porn.ai. Jones is one of several individuals profiled in a recent piece from The Guardian entitled “‘Obedient, yielding, and happy to follow’: the troubling rise of AI girlfriends” as part of a rapidly exploding sector of the AI chatbot market: “delegates [to an adult industry conference in Prague] noted a sharp increase in new websites offering users the chance to form relationships with AI-generated girlfriends, who will remove their clothes in exchange for tokens purchased by bank transfer.”

The fact that AI is being used to expand the porn industry is not surprising. This was only a matter of time. What is surprising is the amount of anti-porn talking points that are being co-opted by these new porn companies as part of their sales pitch. Here is the full quote from Steve Jones:

“Do you prefer your porn with a lot of abuse and human trafficking, or would you rather talk to an AI?” Steve Jones, who runs an AI porn site, asked. “We hear about human trafficking, girls being forced to be on camera 10 hours a day. You’ll never have a human trafficked AI girl. You’ll never have a girl who is forced or coerced into a sex scene that she’s so humiliated by, that she ends up killing herself. AI doesn’t get humiliated, it’s not going to kill itself.”

I read shocking things about the Internet and digital technology frequently, and I confess, when I read that quote in preparation for my bi-weekly radio segment on Carmen LaBerge’s program, I was shaken in a way I’ve not experienced for some time. The problem here isn’t that Jones is wrong (although, to be clear, there are several problems with his statement). The problem is that anti-porn messaging about the evils of the porn industry was successful - so successful it is now being co-opted by pro-porn businesses to leverage AI for innovating the porn industry.

Limits of Cooperation

The anti-porn movement is a shining star of co-belligerency in an era where disagreement ends in division, not cooperation. People of all walks of life and every point on the political spectrum were willing to come together against the porn industry by raising awareness of the evils of the industry and providing support for individuals addicted to porn or looking to escape working in the industry. But co-belligerency requires trade-offs, and the greatest strength of the anti-porn movement is about to become its biggest threat.

The message that led to such passionate cooperation between Christians and non-Christians, conservatives and liberals, and other disparate groups is that the porn industry is a human trafficking industry. Whatever each group may say in addition to that, this is the one drum everyone will beat: the porn industry is an industry that coerces and kidnaps women for the purpose of degrading them as much as realistically possible for exponential profit from addicted individuals. To be clear: this is a true and very effective message. In a culture that breathes the air of “it’s fine as long as you don’t harm someone else”, the messaging of the anti-porn movement struck precisely at the fact that porn does harm someone else, namely countless women who are exploited, consumed, and discarded.

But coming together to rally behind one message, however strong that message is, has an inherent strategic weakness: you are rallying behind one message. What will you do if your opponent can successfully counter that one message?

The emerging AI porn industry got the message loud and clear and intends to turn that message around in their favor. As Amelia Gentleman writes in her piece:

Developers of the new businesses claim they represent an improvement on web-cam businesses, where real women undress on camera and talk to men, because they remove the potential for the exploitation seen in parts of the industry. They also argue that AI performers do not get ill, do not need to have days off, do not get exhausted at the end of a shift, or feel humiliated by the demands made by clients.

In deploying AI to alleviate concerns of exploitation in the porn industry, the porn industry concedes the biggest talking point of the anti-porn movement: you were right, this industry is exploitative. But instead of taking that conclusion and winding down their operations (as anyone who hates porn would wish to see), the porn industry is taking that conclusion and saying “AI is helping us fix that problem, and so porn isn’t bad anymore!” Setting aside the fact that AIs trained for pornographic use will still be trained on real images and videos of real women (and that degradation of real women will still be in demand by many), this messaging will provide a very powerful justification for those who want to consume porn but want to do so with a “do no harm” approach. If the woman on the screen isn’t actually a real, live person, then where is the harm?

The co-belligerency of the anti-porn movement can and should continue despite this new challenge. Christians, however, have the opportunity to advance the uniqueness of Christian position on this subject and speak to something a co-belligerent movement cannot speak to: sexual immorality as a sin against the self.

Advancing the Christian Response

“Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body” (1 Cor. 6:18 ESV). In a “do-no-harm” culture, Paul’s theology of the body and sexual immorality leaves no room for the possibility of indulging our lustful desires without harming someone along the way: ourselves.

Christians must draw a firm and clear line in the sand that AI chatbots are not real people, no matter how “human” they appear to us. AI chatbots are created by man in the image of man to glorify man; while AI girlfriends may be trained on content including real women and made to imitate real women, the chatbots themselves are machines and algorithms, not flesh and blood. Christians also need to firmly press the point that when it comes to AI porn, it is irrelevant that AI girlfriends or porn stars are not real people. The porn industry may tempt you to think that you can indulge in your sexual fantasies in a “safe” or “humane” way, but “God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap” (Gal 6:7 ESV). Taking your sexuality and sexual desires beyond what God has created you and those desires for will ruin you. Indulging your fantasies with machines and algorithms instead of real women will still ruin you. You sin against your own body regardless if you sin against the body of a real person at the same time. The lies of the AI porn industry must be countered with Scripture’s clear teaching that our sexuality–along with every other aspect our lives–does not belong to us to do with whatever we judge good and right, but to God, who created us to glorify him and enjoy him forever.

Of course, Christians must also breathlessly preach that there is no limit to the forgiving and cleansing power of the blood of Christ. Nobody who is in the grips of sexual addiction–whether by porn with real women or porn with AI girlfriends–is beyond the saving power of Christ to take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh that love God and want to obey his commandments. Amid our warnings of the dangers and evil of the porn industry in its old and new forms, the Christian message cannot only be a message of judgment. “Do better” and “Stop it” is not the Gospel. The Gospel is the message that someone took the judgment for your participation in this industry upon himself so that, by faith in him for your salvation, the might give you his perfect record of sinless righteousness. For those who cannot fathom the amount of porn they have consumed, the message of the grace of Christ and the promise of full forgiveness and pardon is the most important message they could hear, even if it accompanies other messages about the evils of the porn industry along the way.

The AI porn industry will tell you “good news: porn doesn’t harm real women anymore.” Jesus tells you “good news: “‘The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10 ESV).’”

---

This quick piece came as a follow-up to my appearance on The Reconnect with Carmen LaBerge earlier this morning. There was more I could say on this subject and wanted to get this down in writing because I believe it is an urgent issue that needs to be addressed. My bi-weekly segment is live every other Thursday (next one is Nov 6) at 6:08AM CST wherever MyFaithRadio is carried, online, or in the podcast version released later in the day.

I have a new article coming out for The Gospel Coalition on the church and AI. At the moment it is scheduled to release on Thursday, October 30, but that could change. I will write a newsletter about the article itself and some additional commentary whenever it releases.

Together, we are passing through Digital Babylon.

Austin