[whichfawkes]

Women can more readily get the kind of attention they want, with minimal effort.

Getting emotionally invested in an AI seems to me like it would go hand in hand with giving up on human relationships. I'm pretty sure men are more likely to do that than women.

[0_____0]

> ... get the attention they want, minimal effort

I...uh, have you asked a woman whether this is true? Like, ask the nearest woman to confirm this and report back.

Most women I have spoken to about this can get attention generally, but very little of it is desirable attention.

There's also a bias I've noticed where people don't consider women that they don't personally find attractive when talking about these things - they're basically invisible.

[sho_hn]

You find this "Women don't have this problem! They can have a relationship whenever they want" sentiment in so many conversations on Hacker News, and it's so unempathetic.

The premise is not true for many women. And even if it were, it's not necessarily any easier to get attention from someone you are interested in yourself. And women have to deal with social anxiety, fears of making themselves vulnerable, self-confidence, body image, etc. around pursuing or initiating relationships just as anyone.

I think this is based in people misreading dating app metrics or something, and completely neglects trying to imagine what life is like for the person.

[JambalayaJim]

So how do you explain the discrepancy in these ads? Or the fact that men are more likely to pay on dates, dating apps, or join apps generally?

No one is suggesting that young women don’t struggle whatsoever. What they are suggesting, is that they don’t struggle to the extent that most would consider buying a paid AI companion.

[whichfawkes]

I'm empathetic to the struggles faced by women. That said, I also realize that those struggles are different than the ones faced by men.

Yes, I believe that women experience this particular problem less than men do, but that doesn't mean that women don't have just as many problems on balance.

The patriarchy is alive and well, and I'm pretty sure it's still harder to be a woman than it is to be a man.

But, if you want to examine why men are expected to be more likely to pay for intimate relationships with AI, I think this area is relevant to the discussion.

[antisthenes]

> Like, ask the nearest woman to confirm this and report back.

You can test this yourself trivially on any dating app pretending to be a woman. In fact this is the purest form of the test, because there's 0 chance of anyone else misreporting their experiences.

> Most women I have spoken to about this can get attention generally, but very little of it is desirable attention.

I think in the dating market, most attention for both sexes is undesirable. However, since women receive comparatively more attention, they are much more likely to receive at least some attention that is desirable.

> There's also a bias I've noticed where people don't consider women that they don't personally find attractive when talking about these things - they're basically invisible.

Wait till you find out how big that bias is in the other direction.

[commandlinefan]

> very little of it is desirable attention

that doesn't contradict what he said - just that the "undesirable" attention is still more desirable than an AI boyfriend could offer. Whereas an AI girlfriend can tautologically offer more desirable attention than the zero attention a significant percentage of men are able to achieve.

[sho_hn]

I think a lot of people (be they men or women) might feel more comfortable with being vulnerable and less afraid of being judged, or their secrets and thoughts being exposed or somehow used against them, with AIs than with real people, whether those real people are accessible/attainable for them or not. Perhaps, knowing deep down that it's not real and doesn't have a motive is a feature.

Whether they should be more comfortable (given the privacy problems with these services) is a different matter.

[whichfawkes]

Sufficiently compromised privacy in conjunction with sufficiently sophisticated data markets starts to look a lot like "having a motive", eventually...

How long before your AI girlfriend is sussing out your feelings and desires in the interest of figuring out how you can most effectively be advertised to?

[AISnakeOil]

How does one discern between undesirable and desirable attention?

Asking for a friend.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

It's the difference between a stalker and a secret admirer. The person receiving the attention decides its desirability.

[0_____0]

Is your friend socially masculine, feminine, or neither? Because it changes the answer.

[dahwolf]

Just be handsome and rich.

[luckman212]

better not be short either

[sergiomattei]

Thank you for speaking what’s on my mind.

It’s shameful that this self-deprecating idea seems to have made it to the mainstream, and even worse that young men are believing it.

[RajT88]

You nailed it. The article says:

> Are said she believes that reflects a gender-based slant — social media platforms freely allow sex-related ads only if the intended audience is men.

So when you've got a huge hungry audience, willing to pay money, the platforms are incentivized to enforce their rules about ads unequally. Content and apps geared towards women, or gay men, are such a small piece of the pie by comparison that there's less incentive to look the other way.

The companies being accused of this unequal enforcement, of course, have a long history of doing things for no other reason than they can make a little extra money on it by not respecting their users. It's entirely believable.

[EatingWithForks]

> Content and apps geared towards women, or gay men, are such a small piece of the pie by comparison that there's less incentive to look the other way.

Sorry, we're talking about Instagram, an app we know puts huge targets on women, especially young women! I have no idea what you're talking about here about nicheness. Fashion products alone are worth way more than the entire porn industry. Not including beauty, skincare, cosmetic surgery, wellness/cleansing, etc...

[RajT88]

There's more women, but the point is demand among women is not as high for such AI partners. The lack of demand makes the market niche.

[EatingWithForks]

I'm asking why the demand is not as high for male AI partners, when other media which also simulates male romantic partnership has HUGE demand. Just look at how much erotica makes. How many weird fetish stories are posted on fanfiction sites where the reader is a character. How much money stupid things like Boyfriend Dungeon (a real thing! a dungeon crawler where you date your exclusively-male weapons!) makes! You'd think AI boyfriends fit way closer to this existing market.

[decafninja]

All of those "simulate" not just a companion, but the whole relationship scenario, which I've been told is what women are attracted to?

Whereas men are simpler creatures attracted to any woman that is visually hot.

The former is a lot harder to implement than the latter.

[EatingWithForks]

But the whole relationship scenario exactly what you'd want an AI partner for, is my bafflement. If I want porn I have plenty of free stuff on PornHub et al. There's no reason to get an intelligent anything, artificial or not, if I actually just want generated fap material. It's obviously selling companionship as well as porn, which is definitely more what I see in erotica, which I already know is fairly formuliac as it is-- basically like porn. So I'm asking: why is it so skewed, because there's clearly a mix of both appeals here. If it was a40/60 or a 70/30 skew, okay because ads are primarily visual attractors. But this makes it sound more like 90/10 or 95/5, which makes no sense to me, I know that fake relationships with hot men is one of the few ways you can make a good income as a self published author.

[spinach]

They can easily get low-grade (and unwanted) attention, but high-grade attention of the opposite sex is just as tough as it is for men. From men's point of view that tends to be more sex only it might seem like women have it easy, but women tend to want more emotional involvement in relationships. Hence why women read more in depth about love and sex in romance novels, and why men watch porn and buy prostitutes. Not saying there aren't men that don't enjoy romance novels or that women don't watch porn, only that it's a very clear that the sexes are biased that way.

[themagician]

Women can more readily get attention, but not necessarily the kind of attention they want. Women also become emotionally invested in fictional characters or celebrities. Same, same, but different.