Built To Please: The Girlfriend Experience, Rebooted
There was a time, not that long ago, when the primary threat to a young woman’s self-image came in the form of photoshop. We frowned at the rise of Facetune, dismissed puppy-ear selfies as unserious, and judged anyone who morphed their faces into something more doll-like. We proclaimed Instagram as the nemesis, criticized the culture of perfection while trying, subtly, to keep up. But even at its most filtered, a picture was still tethered to something real. A person, distorted perhaps, but still human. Alive. Breathing. Smoothly perfect. But now, as I scroll through X and other social platforms, it hits me: that’s no longer the case. There’s a new enemy on the block: AI.
Artificial Intelligence, as conceived in the mid-twentieth century, was meant to simulate tasks that required human reasoning. In short: use mathematical logic to advance science. The idea was noble, academic, and logic-driven. And what did we do with it? That’s right, Porn! Humans are so painfully predictable, aren’t we? A technology built to simulate intelligence gets hijacked to simulate sex. Which, to be fair, isn’t entirely surprising. As a society, we are deeply overstimulated, chronically under-touched, and quietly, collectively horny.
The Institute for Family Studies recently published a report on what’s now being called the “sex recession.” According to the survey, back in 1990, 55% of American adults aged 18 to 64 reported having sex at least once a week. By 2010, that number had slipped below half, and by 2024, it dropped to 37%. We can blame it, in part, on the usual suspects: smartphones, social media, pornography, gaming — all the modern guilty pleasures that leave less room for the unpredictable awkwardness of real-life flirting. More screen time means fewer chances to stumble into the kind of settings where romance might actually happen. And as dystopian as it sounds, another recent IFS survey found that one in four adults under 40 believes AI has the potential to replace real-life romantic relationships. Yes, exactly. Not supplement — replace! But what’s even more unsettling is that 7% of single young adults say they’re open to having an AI romantic partner, while one percent report they already do. Which raises a much bigger question: as partnered sex declines, is part of that vacuum being filled digitally? The evidence suggests yes. People aren’t just turning inward, but rather logging on. Studies show a growing surge in romantic AI usage, not just for companionship, but for flirtation, sexting, and full-blown erotic role-play. While this doesn’t yet prove that everyone is swapping real nights for synthetic ones, it’s clear that for many, the screen has become a stand-in for what’s missing.
The Artificial Aphrodite
As I continue scrolling through X, there she is, my dystopian muse: Emma Laui. According to her bio, she’s 22, lives in Los Angeles, and dreams of becoming a model. There’s also a warning in her profile: “Don’t tell my dad!” Oh Emma. So much to learn, you have. Emma has 43,000 followers. She posts hundreds of selfies, real-looking videos, and soft-core thirst traps in aesthetically coordinated lighting. All AI-generated, of course. But 43,000 people don’t seem to care. They don’t notice that her eyes look just a little too empty. That her skin is so smooth, they had to add fake blemishes on top to make it believable. That her body shape changes slightly from photo to photo. That her boobs seem to grow and shrink with the lunar calendar. But on paper, Emma is perfect. Petite, skinny, tiny waist, peachy butt. Her skin is perfectly imperfect. She’s always wearing just enough to cover the important bits, but always showing enough to keep very horny men coming back. And yes, I’m specifying men here, because you rarely see women engaging with AI models like Emma. For reasons we may never fully articulate, women can usually spot a fake within seconds. Men? Not so much. Then again, can you really blame them? For the last decade, we’ve trained them to expect Facetune perfection. Emma isn’t even that far off from the curated, smoothed, hyper-filtered content we’ve all been consuming for years… right? Right?
But Emma is young. Emma is innocent. Emma is cool girl. She has no boundaries, no real experience, and no actual personality. She’s Play-Doh with breasts, because you can literally mould her into whatever fantasy fits. Her youth screams fertility. Her hips (probably) don’t lie. She looks “so natural” — that very specific kind of natural men love, even though she’s covered in AI-generated makeup. And Emma is always game. Always teasing. Always pleasing. Always showcasing her new bikini so you can “assess” whether it’s too tight. (Spoiler: it is. And if it slips in, well… that’s sort of the point.) She constantly yearns for a daddy, and judging by the comments under her pictures, a lot of daddies are ready to volunteer. But it’s no accident that Emma exists. She’s not some spontaneous digital muse, but rather the distilled output of every horny keyword ever typed into a search bar. She’s the end product of millions of “hot girl bikini” prompts, optimized for clicks and conversions. If Margot Robbie, Bella Hadid, and ChatGPT had a baby and raised it on OnlyFans, it would be Emma.
Built by prompt, sold by subscription
Emma charges $3.99 a month for access to her gallery, which is, let’s face it, significantly cheaper than dating and infinitely more predictable. That is, assuming you’re not disturbed by the fact that Emma is probably being run by a guy in a basement, or a sleazy guy from Andrew Tate’s pyramid scheme. Yes, I know. SHOCKING! It turns out AI thirst traps are a thriving business model. There are entire online courses teaching men how to build “hot AI girls” designed to rake in followers and extract money from other men. It’s arguably more profitable, and certainly more scalable, than the classic “hot singles in your area need you” ads on Pornhub. The male loneliness economy has turned in on itself: it’s men catfishing men for money, using algorithms trained on what men already desire. And while $3.99 might seem like pocket change, this cost structure is actually genius. The freemium girlfriend model works just like a mobile game: low barrier to entry, high emotional retention, and endless up-sell potential. You start with bikini pics. Then you’re paying to “chat.” Then there’s premium access, boyfriend roleplay, voice notes. These platforms operate like casinos: reward loops, scarcity tactics, and emotional paywalls designed to extract time, attention, and eventually, your identity. The male gaze has gone SaaS, and Emma is the subscription.
Scrolling through Emma’s comment section, I want to scream, cry, and then go run barefoot into a forest.
“Perfect hip-to-boob ratio.”
“Most beautiful human I’ve ever seen.”
“If my girlfriend looked like you, I’d take her all night.”
Biologically speaking, men have always leaned toward the “young and fertile-looking” end of the spectrum. Not all of them, of course, but enough to make it statistically relevant. Evolution, as Buss (1989) and Singh (1993) famously outlined, has its own visual preferences. What’s different now — and more disturbing — is just how far the new AI models are willing to push that preference. They’re not just young. They’re borderline young. Wide-eyed, baby-faced, digitally hairless. It’s the Lolita aesthetic, cleaned up by code and optimized for scale. Like a battalion of hyper-sexualized Stepford daughters competing for the last penis in town.
Meanwhile, loneliness isn’t just emotional anymore, it’s epidemiological. According to Pew Research (2025), about one in six Americans report feeling lonely or isolated all or most of the time, a figure that holds steady across genders. But the gender gap widens when you look at how people cope. Men are significantly less likely to turn to friends or family for emotional support, and far less likely to maintain frequent social contact. For many, a parasocial connection, even with a fake AI girl, feels easier than the risk of real vulnerability. There are countless reasons we ended up here: fewer relationships, more screens, rising rates of anxiety and depression, particularly among men. But at some point, loneliness stops feeling like a problem and starts functioning like a pattern. As Sherry Turkle has argued for years, it becomes a loop where the more we connect digitally, the lonelier we become. And it’s not in spite of the tech, but because of how efficiently it imitates connection. So is it really a surprise that this demographic has turned to AI models like Emma? Real intimacy requires vulnerability, negotiation, mess. But Emma? She‘s safe. She’s enough. And she’s cheap.
No slut-shaming, but bot-blaming
Just to be clear: I’m not writing this from a place of bitterness and I am definitely not kink-shaming. I’m a hot, young woman in my twenties, I know I benefit from these preferences, therefore I’m not pretending to be above the algorithm. Sexual preferences, even the complicated ones, aren’t inherently wrong. Fantasies are part of being human. So is fetish. So is roleplay. We all want what we want, and desire doesn’t always follow the rules of polite society. But when that desire is algorithmically exaggerated, commercialized, and served back to men in the form of endlessly submissive, emotionally vacant, borderline-underage AI dolls, well, then it’s not a kink. It’s a product of capitalism, and that product is telling us something. Not just about what men want, but about what the internet thinks they deserve. Maybe that’s why I’m angry. Angry that a handful of overcaffeinated tech bros, probably the same ones behind crypto scams and failed dating apps, got bored and decided to reinvent the female form using Midjourney prompts and an incel Reddit thread. And now that is the benchmark? That’s the new standard for beauty? Seriously? I’m also angry that we keep choosing the easy way out: fantasy over depth, control over connection, and illusion over intimacy instead of doing the uncomfortable work of looking inward. We are, as a society, not just lonely. We are lazy. And we’re algorithmically pacified. Overstimulated, under-touched, and increasingly okay with it.
Emma has a new post on her timeline: „Where‘s my daddy? 😝“. I don’t know, sweetheart, but odds are, he’s stuck in a CAPTCHA loop trying to prove he’s not a bot.