"Those who produce and share AI-generated content should always exercise diligence in verifying the truth of what they disseminate and, in all cases, should 'avoid the sharing of words and images that are degrading of human beings, that promote hatred and intolerance, that debase the goodness and intimacy of human sexuality or that exploit the weak and vulnerable.'" -- Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Antiqua et nova
A few days ago, the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, announced that future versions of the wildly popular ChatGPT chatbot would engage in sexual conversations with its users.
"As we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our 'treat adult users like adults' principle, we will allow ... erotica for verified adults," Altman wrote in a post on X. In this, he was simply following through on a previous announcement by the company that it would soon allow developers to create "mature" apps for ChatGPT.
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We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right.
— Sam Altman (@sama) October 14, 2025
Now that we have�
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This reminded me of something I wrote a few weeks ago, in another column about the impact of AI technology. As I wrote there,
It is astonishing to think that many of the people leading the [AI] revolution that is rapidly transforming society are twenty-something programmers. The degree of their ingenuity - indeed brilliance - is often matched only by the degree of their ignorance - indeed indifference - to the broader consequences of the machines that they are making.
Could there be any more convincing proof for the truth of this statement, than Altman's shockingly cavalier statement that ChatGPT will roll out features permitting erotic conversations with users?
This, it seems, is the dystopia that the "tech bros" of Silicon Valley are bringing to us: a world in which countless humans are engaged in sexually-explicit conversations with non-human artificial intelligence.
The 'advantage' of such chatbots, developers say, is that they will have absolutely no personal needs, preferences or boundaries, meaning that they will be able to fulfill every fantasy, without asking for anything - certainly not love, or even a sense of safety - in return. They can be trained to tailor their every response to the precise preferences of every user, no matter how debased, violent, or destructive those preferences might be.
ChatGPT is already being hailed by many as one of the most innovative and disruptive technologies in the history of humanity. The breadth of its impact can be appreciated with a quick look at the statistics. As of this month, there are reportedly 700 to 800 million weekly users of the app.
And ChatGPT is just one of many AI chatbots released by various companies, including Google, Microsoft, X, and others.
Reports are already pouring in of people developing seemingly deep - even dependent - "relationships" with these chatbots. In an astonishingly brief period of time, many humans have adapted to the notion of turning to human-sounding chatbots for answers and insights into some of the most fundamental issues in their lives.
One could easily write a book on the implications of this intrusion of technology into some of the most sacred aspects of human life. However, the implications in terms of family life and sexuality are potentially the most destructive.
In the field of biology there is something called a "supernormal stimulus." What scientists have discovered is that various animals are primed to respond to certain sensory stimuli. However, when you exaggerate that stimulus, it can make the animals pursue gratification of their attraction (or aversion) to this stimulus to the point of utter exhaustion, and even death.
There are many examples of this. The classic example has to do with the reaction of the males of a certain fish, the stickleback, to the bright red belly of a potential male rival. While male stickleback fish will attack the bright red belly of such a rival, they will attack a brightly painted stick even more intensely, even when the stick doesn't resemble a fish at all.
Many of the most destructive human addictions are essentially fueled by supernormal stimulus. While healthy activities such as completing a difficult project at work will produce dopamine, which then drives a person to pursue further difficult goals, such things as drugs, gambling, and high-risk sports can highjack that system, driving the addict to seek ever more, heedless of the negative consequences.
The sort of streaming, high-definition, hard-core pornography that has become normalized in the past twenty or thirty years is already an example of a super-normal stimulus. Actual sexual relations within a normal, healthy human relationship bear little similarity to the highly choreographed and airbrushed activities engaged in by professional porn stars - stars who, at a minimum, are highly made up, but who often routinely undergo plastic surgery procedures to enhance various parts of their bodies in ways that are far from natural, but which hijack the human desire circuits.
However, even this highly artificial content is constrained by the realities of physics and biology. No human being, no matter how airbrushed or choreographed, can be "perfect." They are always bound by their own, intrinsic individuality. AI chatbots or porn avatars, however, are constrained by nothing of the kind. AI programmers are now developing models whose bodies, "personalities," and behaviors can be custom-made to fit a user's particular preferences.
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We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right.
— Sam Altman (@sama) October 14, 2025
Now that we have�
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Equally disturbing, these AI characters have absolutely no preferences of their own, and no concern for their welfare. We already know that pornography has taken a disturbing turn towards the violent and degrading since the advent of online pornography. It seems that porn users have become increasingly desensitized to the excitement of porn and need increasingly stimulating content to drive their excitement.
AI porn will allow users to engage with completely custom AI models, who will say and do whatever their users want them to do, no matter how vicious, violent, or degrading. What, one has to ask, will this do to our already sexually sick society?
Some people are already hailing the invention of AI-generated porn as a marvellous development. AI-generated porn, they say, will produce a new, "ethical" form of pornography, which people can consume guilt-free because no actual human beings are involved.
It is true that one of the things that has united people on the political left and the political right in opposing the porn industry is the undeniable fact that the industry chews up and spits out porn actors and actresses with a brutal rapidity.
No one who seriously examines the porn industry can deny this. While the left has generally been more accepting of porn, there are significant contingents even on the left, especially among feminists, who recognize that porn is often the furthest thing from "liberating" for the people who produce it. In many cases, it is barely distinguishable from sexual slavery.
The annals of the porn industry are filled with horrific stories of sexual and financial exploitation, drug overdoses, suicides, and vulnerable youth robbed of their innocence, self-worth, and future career opportunities based upon false promises of the sort of fame and wealth that is only achieved by the tiniest minority of porn stars.
Now, say the proponents of AI porn, everybody can relax. People can consume AI-generated porn without any qualm of conscience, knowing that no humans were harmed in the making of it.
This sort of infuriatingly superficial analysis of the porn problem is, unfortunately, all too common.
It is absolutely true that AI-produced porn may reduce the need for human actors and actresses, and could, to some small degree, reduce the level of suffering produced by the industry. However, there are many valid arguments to the effect that AI-generated porn will only make many of the problems with pornography that much worse.
Already, we have generations of children raised on violent pornography. And the evidence is beginning to pour in that this education in hardcore pornography has shaped sexual appetites in a way that having profoundly harmful effects on their users.
Recent surveys find that as much as one-third of college students report that in recent sexual encounters their partner spontaneously engaged in the practice of "choking." In many cases, the partner, raised on the new generation of hardcore pornography, is shocked to find out that his partner does not appreciate being choked - indeed, finds it deeply frightening, and the furthest thing from romantic.
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I'll leave it to you to imagine what impact this is having on future generations' capacity for engaging in healthy relationships and marriages. However, how much worse will the problem become, when people are engaging with AI-generated porn stars, who will do and say whatever they want, with absolutely no restrictions? Who will always profess to enjoy whatever their user wants to do or say, no matter how violent or degrading, because that is what they are programmed to do?
It is inevitable that more people will begin to eschew human relationships altogether, for what human can compete with an AI avatar who wants nothing, demands nothing, and will do everything they are asked to do? And when people do enter human relationships, their desires and expectations may be so profoundly shaped by the false messaging of AI-generated porn, that they will quickly become fed up with their partner, who is not catering to their every desire.
The Catholic Church has developed a rich anthropology that helps us understand the problem of pornography.
The Church teaches that human beings are made in "the image and likeness of God" (Gen 1:27). And as Pope St. John Paul II so eloquently taught throughout his pontificate, what this means is that a human being can never be reduced simply to a "means to an end." To reduce a human being to a vehicle for one's own pleasure or advancement, without any regard to their own well-being, is to turn a human into a "product" to be consumed, not loved and appreciated for his or her intrinsic worth.
Education in this rich, human-focused anthropology begins in the family. It is in the family that children learn (or should learn) that they are loved unconditionally, for who they are, not for anything they can do or contribute to the family. They also learn how to treat others in this same fashion.
Contrary to porn advocates, pornography is not merely a form of "entertainment." As if there could be something that is "mere entertainment!" Everything that we put into our minds and imaginations exerts some influence upon how we view the world. Our memories and imaginations profoundly shape our conscious and sub-conscious worldview.
A steady diet of pornography is as much an "education" as anything learned in school. In many ways, it is far more powerful. A theology teacher can teach his students about the "dignity of man" until he is blue in the face. But if his students are going home and consuming degrading pornography, whether real or AI-generated, his lessons are being powerfully subverted by something that speaks directly to the deepest desire circuits of his students.
Education is something that has as much to do with forming the passions of the students, as it does with forming their intellects. This is why traditional education put such a strong emphasis on things like poetry memory and recitation, music, drama, and great literature. By immersing themselves in these things, a student's passions were subtly, but powerfully oriented towards the true, the beautiful, and the good.
AI-generated pornography instead teaches students to view fellow humans exclusively through the lens of "sexually desirable or undesirable," and will shape their desires in such a way that no human companion could possibly meet their expectations.
The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council wrote in Gaudium et spes, that, like any human endeavor, technological development must be directed to serve the human person and contribute to the pursuit of "greater justice, more extensive fraternity, and a more humane order of social relations," which are "more valuable than advances in the technical field" (Gaudium et spes, n. 35).
Obviously, pornography of any kind, including AI-generated, is completely antithetical to this enterprise of forming a "more humane order" of things in society.
Recently, the Vatican put out a document specifically analyzing the implications of artificial intelligence for the human race, updating the argument of Gaudium et spes for the modern world.
"Like any tool, AI is an extension of human power, and while its future capabilities are unpredictable, humanity's past actions provide clear warnings," wrote Cardinals Victor Manuel Fernandez, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Jose Tolentino de Mendonca, prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education.
The prefects issued several warnings in the document, calling on individual users, developers and even governments to exercise control over how AI is used and to commit "to ensuring that AI always supports and promotes the supreme value of the dignity of every human being and the fullness of the human vocation" (no. 43).
Of note, they warn that AI can lead to "harmful isolation" (no. 58). Indeed, far too many people are already spending the bulk of their time alone, in their rooms, engaging with others solely through digital means. Now, however, they are increasingly communicating, not with humans, but with non-human AI.
How bad will things become, when our younger generations can begin to enter into a "relationship" with a tailor-made porn model, who will never challenge them towards developing the maturity and interpersonal skills that are required to maintain a relationship based upon authentic, self-giving love? The words that come to mind are "dystopian," even "apocalyptic."
I almost always end columns about pornography with an exhortation directed at parents. Please, parents, pay close attention to what your children are doing on their digital devices! And be sure to implement meaningful safeguards.
If things weren't already challenging enough for parents, AI is going to make things so much worse. While ChatGPT says that it will only offer its erotic chat capabilities to verified adults, we know that AI-generated porn is proliferating. Any half-way computer-savvy teen will likely be able to bypass such age restrictions, or to find websites that are not nearly as diligent with age-verification.
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A shocking number of young people are already reporting being victims of so-called "deep fake" porn. In these cases, somebody takes a photo of the individual and then creates a nude "avatar" with their face and then has that avatar carry out sexually explicit activities. Increasingly, these "deep fakes" are so convincing, that it is difficult to determine that they are fake. There are already stories of young people taking their own lives, after AI-generated nude images or videos of them have were widely shared among classmates.
And this is only the tip of the iceberg of what already exists, or will soon exist, thanks to technological advancements. This includes not just AI-generated porn, but the ease of access to such porn thanks to smartphones, as well as increased intensity of stimulus provided by such things as virtual reality, and the trend of pornography towards ever greater violence.
Realities like this mean that parents must exercise an even greater degree of diligence. If at all possible, please hold off giving your children smartphones until they are well into their teens. And if a child must have such a phone (or any internet accessible technology), be sure that you have excellent filtering technologies in place, and that you regularly check that these filters are functional.
It is almost impossible to overstate the dangers that unfettered access to the Internet poses for the next generations. Even the most diligent parents risk missing something: for example, that their child has a ChatGPT account that they can put into "anonymous" mode and ask questions that should only be asked of one's parents.
Diligence, regular conversations, and prayer are your weapons in protecting the innocence of your children.