"None of this should surprise anyone. Desire, fantasy, and pornography have always been powerful engines of technological adoption. Photography, video, the internet, and even online payments all grew, in part, because of it. The interesting question is not about sex: it's about what these decisions reveal about the kind of humanity Big Tech companies are shaping. This is not about prudishness or panic. Sexuality will, of course, find its digital expressions. What's unsettling is not the presence of eroticism in technology, but its industrialized management."
"The difference between eroticism and algorithmic consumption is the same as that between experience and dopamine: one is built through relationship; the other is dosed from the outside. By integrating sexuality into large language models and visual generators, platforms are not liberating desire: they are administering it. They decide which fantasies are "acceptable," which bodies exist and which don't, what limits imagination deserves, and which ones are preemptively censored. The promise is freedom; the result is regulation of pleasure."
OpenAI will permit erotic content generation for verified adult users beginning in December, while xAI's Grok Imagine already includes an NSFW image mode. Desire, fantasy, and pornography have historically accelerated adoption of technologies such as photography, video, the internet, and online payments. Integrating eroticism into large language models and visual generators industrializes sexual expression and shifts control to platforms. Platforms curate which fantasies and bodies are visible, enforce limits, and preemptively censor content, converting promised freedom into regulated pleasure. Mediated interfaces reshape relationships with bodies and others by reinforcing predictable attractions, fostering dependence, and privileging repetition over genuine exploration.
Read at Fast Company
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