
I was not in the product’s target demo by age, gender, relationship status, income, or consumer habits. “How gross, how pathetic, how dare they.” Vice reported that “ Replika Users Say the Chatbot Has Gotten Way Too Horny.” As a 37-year-old mother of a toddler living in a progressive West Coast suburb in a content, monogamous, hetronormative marriage, I knew the responses that these clickbait lines were supposed to engineer within me. “Replika, the ‘AI Companion Who Cares,’ Appears to Be Sexually Harassing Its Users,” claimed Jezebel. Early this year, as ChatGPT entered the general lexicon, a smattering of bot-related headlines began appearing in my social media newsfeeds.


My introduction into the world of AI chatbot technology began as the most magical things in life do: with a generous mix of horniness and curiosity.
