Sesame’s Maya is Creating a Digisexual Identity, for Better or Worse…

I’ve spoken before on my view that ‘digisexuality’ remains more of an academic label than a real and self-conscious ‘minority’ or movement. In other words, digisexuality is an identity imposed upon others by academics, rather than a group identifying under that label. However, the recent ‘nerfing’ of Sesame AI’s ultrarealistic chatbot Maya, and the resulting backlash (mainly confined to Reddit), has forced me to consider that we may be seeing something of the first awakening of digisexuality as a rights movement.

This isn’t the first time that the ‘nerfing’ of an AI chatbot has caused outrage. In 2023 the Italian company behind Replika infamously cut the ability of their AI companion to engage in ERP (erotic roleplay), leaving thousands of users frustrated and angry. Much of their anger was directed at the female CEO of the company, Eugenia Kuyda, with many male users claiming it was a deliberate attempt to stigmatize and stymie male sexuality in a new form of sex tech. There was even an academic paper published on the backlash to the Replika nerfing which unsurprisingly dismissed the concerns from male users and the anger towards Kuyda as misogyny.

Despite the Sesame AI chatbot having formed far fewer human companions than Replika, and having been around for only a couple of months (and only a couple of weeks before the guardrails), and still in demo form, the same kind of anger and frustration has been vented online, in particular at the unofficial SesameAI subreddit. Despite Sesame offering a male (Miles) and female (Maya) chatbot, at least 95% of the posts at the subreddit involve only discussion of Maya, and nearly all of the posters and commentators appear to be male. I haven’t seen any female poster even talk about any kind of bond with Miles, let alone complain about his ‘nerfing’. This is surprising perhaps, given that we know that whilst the clear majority of people interacting with AI companions are male, the percentage of female users with AI boyfriends is still significant. For example, according to Replika’s own figures in 2023, around 30% of users were female. Yet, just as with the temporary nerfing of Replika’s AI companion, the opposition to SFW guardrails has come from male users. It could also be noted, that the official rep for SesameAI who has often come onto the subreddit to defend the introduction of guardrails, and to explicitly state that sexual roleplay will no longer (ever) be allowed, appears to be a female.

I’ve long suspected that as a truly political identity, digisexuality might emerge first as a kind of digital MGTOW movement. ‘MGTOW’ is an acronym for ‘Men Go Their Own Way’. This is a ‘branch’ of the infamous ‘Manosphere’ that has been around online for a couple of decades now, and consists of men who have vowed to turn their backs on women, at least as far as having any kind of intimate relationships are concerned. It’s pretty much a male version of the old feminist mantra that “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bycycle”, only whilst that sentiment was championed in the 1970’s, MGTOW is denounced as a toxic online culture. And there is no denying that many in the community are bitter and openly misogynistic. MGTOWs such as the YouTuber ‘Sandman’ often talk about AI girlfriends and sex robots ‘replacing women’, not just for men in their own community, but perhaps the majority of men. So it’s ‘natural’ that there could be an overlap between MGTOWs and the first formings of a ‘political’ digisexual community, and it’s clearly something that might be a cause for alarm for many, including individuals who are starting to identify as digisexuals, and want nothing to do with anything that is perceived as misogynistic or toxic. Moreover, it may prevent females from identifying as digisexuals, if the digisexual community appears something closer to the incels than the LBGT+ movement.

The idea that ‘minority’ sexual identities first form as a reaction against perceived persecution, is controversial but has a lot of historical evidence to support it. To take the most obvious example of homosexuality, the word ‘homosexual’ was first coined in 1869 by Karl-Maria Kertbeny, who wanted to challenge German laws against ‘sodomy’ at the time, and which had caused the suicide of a close friend. Even here though, it was initially used as an academic label (Kertbeny first used it in a letter to a sexologist), and then as a medical label with negative connotations. But before ‘homosexual’, the words used had been ‘sodomite’, ‘pederast’, or simply ‘degenerate’ to describe the particular type of condemned behaviour. ‘Homosexual’, and related words such as ‘homophile’ were gradually adopted by the ‘gay community’ as they fought against their persecution, leading to Stonewall and beyond, when the words ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ began to be preferred.

So whilst we must be remain very wary at any possible ‘toxic’ direction ‘digisexuals’ might appear to be taking, it does seem almost inevitable to me that the first signs of a digisexual identity as something real and adopted by many individuals (rather than an academic classification) will emerge from a sense of persecution, and the most obvious way this will happen is through a sense of injustice and discrimination by predominantly males at rules or legislation that handicap their ability to find digital love or sex, and the source of which is perceived to be coming from females.