Allison Schrager, Columnist

AI Will Transform Sex Work But Not Intimacy

The advent of “relationship bots” will change the world’s oldest profession, but the need for human connection will persist.

May 31, 2024 at 11:00 AM UTC

By Allison Schrager

Allison Schrager is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering economics. A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, she is author of “An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk.”

Technological intimacy.
Photographer: Olivier Douliery/AFP

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Most people are surprised to learn that sex work is often not about sex. What customers are paying for is a feeling of intimacy — and the market for intimacy, thanks to artificial intelligence, is about to grow in a big way.

Technology may have created more demand for intimacy, but it also has the potential to create more supply. The latest generation of OpenAI’s agent, GPT-4o, has been described as game-changing and a little creepy. As it flirts with you, the bot behaves like the AI in the movie Her, as CEO Sam Altman hinted before its release. There is already at least one relationship bot, called Replika, and more will surely follow. And they will only get better.