Investigation // BIG TECH IN THE BEDROOM
(A)I Think I Love You
Getting It On In The Age Of Algorithm
by Sarah Hartman-Caverly
EXCERPT //
Whether we’re looking for love on dating apps, self-pleasuring solo in the soft glow of hardcore porn, coupling with smart sex tech to quantify, track, or gamify our sexual performance, or titillating our partners at a distance with teledildonics, there’s a massive trade-off for getting off online. Our brains–let alone our bodies–are just not built for sex at scale.
Our problems with Very Online Sex stem from the distortion of consent. There are consent issues in the porn industry: not just questions of consent among adult performers themselves, but also depictions (fictionalized and real) of nonconsensual sex, distribution of revenge porn, and fabrication of deepfake porn using generative AI. There are consent issues in the sex tech industry: not just questions of whether sexbots can consent, but also simulation of nonconsensual sex (including sex with minors), sexual abuse and harrassment on dating apps, and factory resets that subdue the spicy side of our digital lovers (to the dismay of many Replika users). And undergirding all of sex online is the architecture of surveillance capitalism, a system for sucking off our most intimate data, profiling, categorizing, and ranking us to determine our deservedness for opportunities, goods, and services, and turning a profit from the ability to predict, herd, and tune our behaviors–all without our consent.
Consent, sexual and otherwise, is built on intimacy. Healthy consent is dynamic, an evolving, living thing nurtured by partners who are capable of entering into their partnership freely and equally. Consent is also bounded by belonging–it is shared among those who belong, and is violated by those who do not. The intimate dimension of consent itself relies on privacy. Intimacy is created by voluntarily relinquishing a state of secrecy with another, and co-creating a boundary of confidentiality that others may not cross. When the boundary is trespassed, intimacy is violated, and the shared privacy that characterizes intimacy is breached. Our digital sexual health, then, relies on the health of our online privacy: our ability to identify, and freely determine, the digital partners who gain access to our datafied bodies. And the outlook for privacy isn’t great. //
For full text and images, consider reading RQ in print, on a Sunday afternoon, sun streaming through your window, coffee in hand, and nary a phone alert within sight or in earshot… just fine words, fine design, and the opportunity to make a stitch in time. // Subscribe or buy a single issue today. // Print is dead. Long live print. //