{"id":118275,"date":"2025-10-13T00:14:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T00:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/118275\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T00:14:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T00:14:18","slug":"boys-using-ai-girlfriends-to-design-a-personal-porn-partner-conference-hears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/118275\/","title":{"rendered":"Boys using &#8216;AI girlfriends&#8217; to design a personal porn partner, conference hears"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some teenage boys are using \u2018AI girlfriends\u2019 to create their own lifelike online porn partner, a conference on sexual violence has heard.<\/p>\n<p>Users can choose from a menu of body shapes, voices, and skin colour and can request a video of their \u2018girlfriend\u2019 performing any sex act they want.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Researchers said that boys could take a photo of any real girl from their social media accounts and use that image in the software to create their fake girlfriend.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Ruth Breslin, director of the Sexual Exploitation Research Programme (SERP) at UCD, said this development should give people \u201cgreat cause for concern\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">She said AI girlfriends allowed users to select the type of relationship preferred and that \u201cstepsister\u201d was the most popular.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Ms Breslin was addressing a conference on technology, pornography, and sexual violence, organised by Ruhama, which provides services to women in the sex trade and victims of human trafficking.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">The conference was addressed by health minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, justice minister Jim O\u2019Callaghan, and Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly, and saw the launch of Ruhama\u2019s annual report for 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">The conference also heard:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"listbullet\">\n<li>Dublin Rape Crisis Centre was seeing a rise among female clients of \u201cstrangulation, suffocation, and anal rape\u201d and said these were direct consequences of viewing extreme pornography, readily available online;<\/li>\n<li>Research being conducted in Europe, including in France and Spain, was showing a \u201chuge rise\u201d in sexual violence on young people by young people.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Ms Breslin said online pornographic material of women being \u201cslapped and strangled\u201d during sex was \u201cbecoming normalised\u201d. She also said there was increasing use of teenagers in adult pornography, which was fuelling the demand for child sex-abuse material.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">She said SERP was conducting research in second-level schools, which had revealed the popularity of \u2018AI girlfriends\u2019.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Ms Breslin showed images of the women, noting they were \u201cvery real\u201d looking. She said there were no age restrictions for accessing the programme and it could be accessed for free.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">She said users can choose from a range of characteristics and body types and could also select the type of relationship.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">She said this was concerning as they could select \u2018work colleague\u2019, but also \u2018stepsister\u201d or \u2018stepmom\u2019.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">She said: \u201cYou can ask AI to send a short video of the woman performing any sex act at your command.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">She said there are voice options too, where the voice can be dominant, seductive, or submissive. She said people can also choose skin colour, but shocked those present when she said that, when you go to select, there is an image of a face covered in semen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Ms Breslin said you could have a situation of a 14-year-old boy who might be too shy to talk to a girl he likes in his class, but can take her photo from social media and put it into the AI Girlfriends app.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">She said surely this should be a \u201cgreat cause of concern\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/4814871_14_articleinlinemobile_Ruth_20website_1_.jpg\" alt=\"Ruth Breslin, director of the Sexual Exploitation Research Programme (SERP) at UCD, said this development should give people 'great cause for concern'. Picture: Naoise Culhnae\" title=\"Ruth Breslin, director of the Sexual Exploitation Research Programme (SERP) at UCD, said this development should give people 'great cause for concern'. Picture: Naoise Culhnae\" class=\"card-img\"\/>Ruth Breslin, director of the Sexual Exploitation Research Programme (SERP) at UCD, said this development should give people &#8216;great cause for concern&#8217;. Picture: Naoise Culhnae<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Mr Kelly said under legislation introduced in November 2023, non-fatal strangulation causing serious harm became an offence and that, to date, more than 60 cases had been prosecuted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\n            There is an emerging normalisation of violence and sexual violence against women.\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">He added that it involved the \u201cdehumanisation\u201d of girls and women.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">He said it was \u201cexposing\u201d men and boys to violent and extreme sexual acts, which in turn presented the risk of them perpetrating these crimes themselves.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">He said it had a \u201cvery corrupting\u201d influence, particularly on boys and men.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">AI was creating more realistic deep fakes, he said, which were contributing to more harassment and revenge porn.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Rachel Murrogh, chief executive of Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, said they were seeing more cases of \u201cstrangulation, suffocation, and anal rape\u201d and said these were \u201cdirect downstream consequences\u201d of extreme pornography.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">She said she wanted to see the Government say it was going to tackle the tech companies \u201chead-on\u201d but said that she does not feel there is any \u201curgency\u201d about this generally in society.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">She said she \u201ccan\u2019t understand\u201d why the tech companies in Ireland can\u2019t be tackled, adding that the State is able to do this for tobacco, alcohol, and obesity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Denise Charlton of Community Foundation Ireland said the tech firms were unregulated and were \u201crunning rampant\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\n            It\u2019s a terrifying time and a terrifying time for young people, who are the future.\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">She said society \u201cowed it\u201d to them to tackle this issue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">The Ruhama report shows a 75% increase in the number of people engaging with the charity in 2024, including a 35% rise among victims of human trafficking and a 20% rise among those impacted by prostitution.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">It said its office in Limerick engaged with 114 people last year. It said its service in Cork opened in 2024 and dealt with 37 people in outreach activity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Se\u00e1n Cooke of Men\u2019s Development Network said was a \u201ccrisis of confidence\u201d among men to get involved in this area and said there was a \u201cfear of feeling judged\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some teenage boys are using \u2018AI girlfriends\u2019 to create their own lifelike online porn partner, a conference on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,3498,290,18,19,17,42652,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-118275","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-sexual-abuse","16":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}