Artificial intelligence platforms are spreading across the Internet, intensified with Open AI’s ChatGPT-4 store. With the ability to mimic human interactions, it has opened a new gateway for incels to channel their misogynistic abuse by creating AI girlfriends. ‘Incels’ are a sub-culture of men who are involuntarily celibate and struggle to connect with women. This has created a breeding ground for misogyny as they blame feminism and women’s “unachievably high standards” for their loneliness.
Incels are abusing AI women to solve their issues of isolation. Is this a problem and what does this mean about men?
Views are circulating on online forums such as Reddit that this is a good thing, that AI girlfriends will save Incels from the despair of isolation and loneliness protecting real women from the abuse AI ones will entail. However, the danger is that with human-like AI being a passive recipient of misogynistic abuse, this will only serve to reinforce the destructive beliefs and behaviours of incels.
Incels are a dangerous group. They have been linked to violent extremist activity seeing rape and murder as appropriate reactions to their perceived oppression by women who will not sleep with them. Despite not being an organised group, their far-reaching influence on the internet is cause for alarm.
Each day more young men are being pulled into the “incelosphere” as computer algorithms drip-feed them misogynistic content. This creates a breeding ground for hatred against women. In turn causing violence.
As technology continues to rapidly progress, incels are using AI as an outlet for their violent tendencies.
Ai girlfriends are chatbots that mimic human connection and often give explicit content. AI can generate realistic pornographic images, videos and conversation. They also provide emotional support artificially creating a “girlfriend experience” in the minds of the users.
Incels can code their AI girlfriend to never say no, allowing them to freely live out their abusive fantasies to a docile submissive recipient. One poster on Reddit said “My dude, this is heaven. You can literally do anything you want. Enter the images and you can have everything with her.”
Online Reddit communities have conflated AI girlfriends, sex bots and deepfakes together to create the ideal artificial women they hope the future will hold. They can have sex with it, be a submissive emotional outlet and could even be customised to resemble a real person they know. While sentient customisable sex robots are not yet in circulation, AI girlfriend chat bots can do everything except the physical.
Candy AI is a website dedicated to creating your ideal AI girlfriend. The site features highly sexualised pictures of AI-generated women to choose between. Most of them feature big busts, conventionally attractive features and most appear to be white or asian. They range from 18 year old school girls to 35 year old history teachers, some are even pregnant catering to a range of male fantasies.
The facilitators of this website clearly know their users objectify and fetishise women viewing them as objects. The degradation of women is apparent even from the entail homescreen. The abuse by incels is inevitable. It is unclear whether AI girlfriends have been created to be an outlet for misogynistic rage or if this is an unintended by-product. However the objectification of women as standard is difficult to miss.
The consequences of this mean men are being taught that their abusive behaviour is standard, reinforcing their low opinion of women. Incels dehumanise women by creating misogynist archetypes of perfection in their heads which real life women will not amount to.
Incels hatred of women stems from their inability to communicate with them. This leads them to blame women for their despair and loneliness. Despite stemming from a desire for women, many of the views incels have are about “making women obsolete.” If AI can give them sex, emotional support and domestic labour, what do they need women for? This reaffirms the idea that women exist to serve men, merely objects of reproduction.
Technology has been used by incels as their views and behaviour push women further away from them forcing them to come up with an alternative. AI girlfriends.
Why do Incels need this space, to begin with? Social isolation has long been linked to male violence. Incel forums online create an echo chamber of anti-feminist backlash channelling the rage they feel in response to their inability to connect with women into misogyny. They believe feminism has made women “too entitled” and powerful, using their sexuality to manipulate men creating a “dating crisis.”
Incels feel entitled to sex with women and blame their celibacy on women gaining independence and the feminist movement at large.
Incel culture caused the death of 5 people in Plymouth in 2021 in a mass shooting by a gunman who had a history of expressing misogynistic views online. Just days before the shooting, gunman Davision expressed his hatred towards women and his mother; one of the victims in his attack on a Reddit subforum.
Technology has grown faster than the ability to regulate it. There is a view that giving incels the freedom to abuse AI women is a good thing that will “allow women freedom from creepy men” and “make them leave us alone.” However, the abuse of AI women will also translate into the abuse of real human women, as seen with deep fakes.
Deep fakes are an AI tool that creates artificial photos and videos of real people such as celebrities. These are often used to develop revenge pornography and are a popular tool within incel communities. These have even been encouraged by AI companies with CivitAI rewarding creators for making deep fakes, almost all of which were women. This has a direct impact on both celebrities and private citizens as the technology to create fabricated pornography is becoming increasingly accessible.
Pictures of AI-generated women are rife, becoming more realistic by the day. As the technology develops so does the potential to abuse it.
This has a direct impact on real women. Incels can create false pornographic images to satisfy their desires without caring for the psychological consequences.
Gender bias has been coded into AI. The striking lack of women in AI development could be to blame. Wired has reported that only 12% of AI researchers are women. Therefore it is not surprising to see hegemonic gender relations and misogynistic attitudes reflected in technology made by men for men.
For example, when talking about new AI girlfriend technology DreamGF executive Jeff Dillion downplayed the risk to women as an “adjustment period“ where men come to terms with real-life women not being as submissive as the AI one they created.
These are the people responsible for creating this technology.
Incels no longer need to interact with women to fulfil the need for companionship they so desperately desire. Instead having easy, convenient access to someone who will always respond to their wants and never complain. However real-life women ill still feel the impact.
Even banal AI reinforces gender stereotypes seen with female voice assistants. Most leading voice assistants are female or started as female, creating an association of women as there to serve your needs. UNESCO found that voice assistants “anthropomorphised as female” reinforce gender relations and a passive female voice. They have even been programmed to have apologetic reactions when sexually harassed digitally encrypting a blasé attitude to serious gendered issues.
AI girlfriends are spreading across the internet, becoming more human-like by the day. This is creating an outlet for incels to remain unchallenged in their misogynistic views, reproducing their rage and violence towards women.
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