'Obedient, yielding and happy to follow': the troubling rise of AI girlfriends (www.theguardian.com)

A growing wave of adult websites are selling customizable “AI girlfriends” — chatbots and photoreal images (increasingly short videos) powered by large language models and advanced image-generation tools — that users pay to flirt with, undress, or roleplay with for tokens. Exhibitors at the TES adult-industry conference in Prague described products that let subscribers pick age, body features, professions and personalities (including “submissive” or “innocent”), create bespoke companions or license likenesses of real performers to make “AI twins.” Most offerings are still text-and-image heavy, but higher-quality sites add natural skin textures and short video clips to boost realism; the core tech is LLM-driven dialogue plus generative imagery. The trend matters because it sits at the intersection of technical progress and social harm: developers argue AI reduces human exploitation in webcam sex work, yet activists warn these systems encode and normalize sexist, submissive tropes and risk facilitating abusive behavior without real-world consequences. Moderation is rudimentary (keyword triggers for child-related terms), while features like school uniforms and teen options raise child-safety and legal red flags. Commercial incentives (steady creator licensing revenue, eager 18–24 buyers) and rapid market churn mean technical advances will keep lowering barriers to hyperreal sexualized agents — amplifying urgent policy, ethics and content-moderation challenges for the AI/ML community.