Sexual Autonomy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

• In Event: Rethinking Challenges of Technology: AI, Algorithms, and Biopower

Abstract

This paper examines an emerging threat to sexual autonomy: algorithmic artificial pornography. AI-generated sexual media may threaten human sexual autonomy in two ways. First, we may have reason to be worried about sexual manipulation of consumers by companies via their bots. If the AI algorithm is attempting to predict consumer preferences, it may guide the consumer towards forms of sexual media that he or she would not otherwise have chosen, disempowering the consumer as a sexual agent. While some consumers may experience such algorithmic guidance as beneficial, exposing them to new and perhaps ultimately more desirable forms of sexuality, we may also have reasons to worry about potential harms. If sexuality is at all habituated, then having machines “choose” our sexual experiences may undermine our capacity for human sexual flourishing. Second, and still more worrisome, AI promises the potential of non-human “interactive” online sexuality, such as AI partners or scenes in “virtual reality” (VR). Interactive sexual media has the potential to bring many benefits to consumers, especially for those who have struggled to find partnerships in the physical world. However, here we have the problem that the consumer is not the only active participant in determining what sexual acts are pursued; because the AI can act in response to the consumer, the bot or VR-partner can behave in ways which compromise the sexual autonomy of the human. What should our response be to rapes in virtual space? We have some research on this behavior, but only with regards to other human actors; what moral agency can we ascribe to the AI, and what might we owe victims if the system does behave in ways experienced as a violation? Overall, this paper argues that we ought to institutionalize protections for sexual autonomy into our systems for governing artificial intelligence, and posits three means of doing so.

Author

• Joan O'Bryan, Stanford University