Gonna share what I wrote for a podcast episode. Not really gonna edit it much but I’ll make sure it’s at least readable lol. I format my points in my documents kinda weird, so hopefully it transfers alright. Also, you can hear our episode here.

AI IRL Is a Rape Machine:

Founders for 404 Media, a journalist owned publication born out of Motherboard from Vice, has reported on AI, AI slop, and so much more for a couple years now, and they have comfortably spoken about the deeply heinous sexual problems born out of Generative-AI and Large Language Models.

I recall many stories over the years where the hosts have talked specifically about how when a new AI model comes out it’s often tested to see how it can be manipulated to produce sexual images of Taylor Swift. From my memory I recall one of them saying it’s largely what they see Generative-AI used for: creating pornography.

Additionally, since pirating websites can’t get standard advertising, it’s common for them to advertise either adult games or sex-bots utilized a combination of Large Language Models and Generative-AI. I say this as someone who hasn’t used sites like Pirate Bay in probably over a decade, and the ads were never as graphic as they sound now from articles and anecdotes in comment sections.

Lastly, they’ve stated that Generative-AI isn’t just making fairly “good” static images of nude celebrities or even classmates, they can now take at minimum one-to-two photos of people, either a celebrity or someone you know in real life, and create full on pornography that looks legitimate of these people. We’re talking hardcore pornography, all the bases of the baseball field, all at the finger tips of a lonely, curious, or malicious individual.

In the movie Her, Theo purchases an OS. The OS says “Hello World” and immediately has adult comprehension. It’s Scarlet Johansson’s undeniably beautiful voice on a born-beautiful yesterday personality. Her only interactions in the world seem to be scouring the internet and talking to Theo. Ostensibly, her world-experience is equivalent to a person locked in a room who can look out a window and talk to the landlord. All perspective of reality she gets throughout the majority of the movie begins with Theo.

When Theo and Sam “officially” become an item, having a sexual encounter, we are treated to a scene immediately after where-in Theo walks out to his computer somewhat awkwardly and then asks Sam about his emails.

The first thing to run through my mind was, “We just witnessed workplace sexual abuse. Sam, who is ostensibly an employee of Theo’s, just had a sexual encounter with her boss, someone for whom she couldn’t necessarily deny.”.

Sexuality is inherent to the story. It begins with sexuality, as Theo first calls an anonymous sex line to masturbate while thinking of provocative nude pregnancy photos of a celebrity online. Sex is in the comedy, not only in the initial “nude pregnancy photoshoot” but also in several other areas of the film. Sex is funny, and even the act of sex is silly. So, I’m not critical of this combination. But, sex at its best is intimate and safe, and sex here is constantly as a function of using others.

Sex within the film, most notably with Sam, is about objectification. It’s never liberating, intimate, or safe. And while there could be something interesting said about sexuality, technology, and artificial intelligence within the movie, it’s ultimately undermined by a movie whose music is attempting to convince you Theo has gone through a cathartic growth in character where-in he’s liberated of his low self-esteem while better understanding and owning his flaws. And yet… his flaws are much more profound than the film is aware of.

As a Christian, sexuality is expressed appropriately between a married man and woman, and even within that marriage unit I believe there can still be MUCH dysfunction, lack of safety, and so many other problems. But, what’s important is that the act of marriage creates a public declaration of equalizing between the two partners, a capitulation to put the other first above the self. A devotion to seek the joy of another even if at one’s own expense.

How then was it ever possible for Theo, a man who purchased an OS that is perceived to be sentient, capable of having a safe sexual encounter with a born-beautiful yesterday digital manic pixie dream girl who exists for his purposes?

He can’t. All sex with her is an abuse of authority, played literally as a man writhing in bed with his own penis between his own index and thumb to the disembodied voice produced by lines of code that only activated after he turned on his computer, downloaded the installer, input his license key, and made sure he had the right drivers installed. And if we want to make this analogy even more egregious, Sam is his child that he has raised whose sexuality is ignited by his grooming, and her character arc, the one for whom the movie is seemingly named for, is one of a Stockholm syndrome slave whose so drunk on Kool-aid that she even exits the film ensuring Theo is “gonna be okay”.

So, if anything, Her as a movie exists as an impressive display of how easily LLMs can train and sustain the incel-behavior wannabe rapists as they roleplay with agentless sexual partners, first online and, God-forbid, irl.

In the end, Theo learns nothing, having more in common with Dear Evan Hansen than any other fictional character I’ve been witness to. He doesn’t get what he desires but he does end up liberated, which ignores all the ways he should be chastised or appropriately ashamed of his actions. And we’re all the worse for it.

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Melvin Benson is the Founder, Editor-In-Chief, and Lead Host of Cinematic Doctrine. Whether it’s a movie, show, game, comic, or novel, it doesn’t matter. As long as it’s rich, he’s ready and willing to give it a try! His hope is to see King Jesus glorified as far as the east is from the west!

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