Lawmakers have much to do to catch up with the rise of AI, and in the absence of broader legislation regulating AI, that will remain the case for years to come. With that said, I do not think that the rise of AI pornography will complicate the fundamental premises of the anti-porn argument being made, which is that pornography is rewiring the upcoming generation with deeply horrifying effects.

Last year, Samuel D. James—author of an essential book on the internet age titled Digital Liturgies—warned that “Christians are not ready for the age of ‘Adult AI.’”

In his essay, James made the case that the rise of AI would herald a shift in the porn industry similar to the shift from print magazines and video cassettes to near-omnipresent internet pornography. This, James warned, would render many of the most potent anti-porn arguments made by Christians, such as the harm pornography incurs against those directly involved, moot.

“For users, AI simply represents a limitless scope of what you can make digital performers do,” James told me. “Before the web, the vast majority of pornography fit nearly in either the ‘softcore’ or ‘hardcore’ varieties. The web pretty much destroyed that distinction by offering users whatever they want at one location, and how when we say that the average 10-year-old has been already exposed to pornography, we don’t mean Playboy; we mean things much more intense and explicit. AI porn will, I think, likewise shift the window, so that the baseline of content becomes much wilder, much more exotic.”

I think James is right, although my involvement in the anti-porn world over the past decade leaves me unconvinced that the primary arguments being used against porn will be ineffective in the age of AI. The argument that pornography destroys porn stars has been long replaced by the argument that pornography rewires the minds of the user—and that millions of those users are now children. At major anti-porn conferences, few are making the argument that pornography must be addressed because porn performers are harmed (although they are).

But it is indisputably true that the rise of AI will hugely exacerbate the porn crisis. Girls are already being viciously bullied by AI porn apps, where boys can create deep fake pornography of their peers. This has already resulted in a string of suicides, as AI meets revenge porn. There are apps that can digitally “undress” people that have been used against high school girls with traumatizing effects, and authorities—as usual—have been caught completely off-guard by the latest pornographic technological development. Just this month, Michigan passed two laws banning AI-generated pornography.

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