A “gooner” tells WIRED he became hooked on the cartoonish nature of AI porn. Several addiction experts say the genre could pose a problem for people prone to compulsive sexual behavior.
Original article by Jason Parham
Kyle’s interest in AI porn began last summer as he circled rock bottom. From the outside, everything seemed fine. He was in a committed relationship with his longtime girlfriend. He enjoyed the perks of his job working for a sports betting company. Still, all he could think about was fueling his porn addiction in new ways—even at the cost of feeling mentally drained and tired. “Pretty much all I wanted to do was doomscroll on my phone and watch content. And I wasn’t able to stop, even though I noticed that it was a problem. I became desensitized,” he says. “I was looking for that next dose of excitement.”
That’s when he came across an Instagram Reel showing an AI-generated image of a woman with “extremely large breasts the size of her body,” he says. He knew it was fake but also felt strangely seduced by it. “In the back of my mind, I was like, OK, I do find this kind of attractive,” he says. “It was something I had not seen before—and I had to see more.”
Kyle is a “gooner,” a term for someone who finds pleasure from prolonged sessions of intense masturbation. The 26-year-old, who asked to be identified by his first name citing privacy concerns, says that at the peak of his addiction he would force himself to masturbate “either out of habit, obligation, or desire.” The Instagram Reel led him down a rabbit hole of dreamlike pleasure where he searched for more AI porn that depicted “women with cartoonish boobs, areolas, and nipples twice the size of the rest of her torso, [and] super wide hips.”…
In June, a member of the subreddit NoFap—a nominal peer support forum for people who suffer from CSBD, specifically gooners—warned against the use of AI porn.
“Came across the devil himself and you know they say the road to hell is really fun,” they posted to the group, which has 1.2 million members. “Stay the fuck away from that shit guys … It’s going to get harder to avoid because it captures all your vices and traps you.”
“Already went down that rabbit hole, super hard to get out of it,” one member replied.
“Agreed,” wrote another. “AI porn is insane and insanely addictive.”
Ross Crothers, a therapist who specializes in queer- and trans-affirming care in East Los Angeles, believes AI porn will change how people approach relationships, “or rather, avoid them,” he says.
Once the neural pathway between AI and sexual pleasure is firmly established, he adds, “it almost becomes too efficient. This causes other sexual experiences to shift and become less pleasurable in comparison. This is where we will see more avoidance of relationships and an increase in isolation.”
Kyle says his girlfriend, who he has been with for seven years, began to notice a distance growing between them this year that started to negatively affect their sex life. “My erections weren’t as strong as they could have been. I couldn’t last as long,” he says. “And I never directly told her what I was exactly struggling with. But I could sense that there was less attraction there than there had been before. She had gotten the proverbial ick.”…
Kyle’s epiphany that it was time to finally temper his addiction came during a work trip to New York City in February. He was alone in a hotel, away from his girlfriend, and, he says, “I just kept doing it and doing it, but I didn’t feel any better.” He’s since taken action to limit his need to masturbate, including joining the Reddit support group NoFap, where members share similar struggles.
Professionals believe that could make initiating new IRL relationships more difficult.
Young people are currently facing a mental health crisis. Last year, the US surgeon general called for a warning label on all social media platforms. One major consequence has been a “loneliness epidemic,” according to a 2024 Harvard study, which suggested that people who feel more alone suffer from higher rates of depression and anxiety.
“Social media has distorted our views on so many things—body image, social class, politics. It’s hurt people in many ways,” says Daniel Glazer, a psychotherapist at Fifth Ave Psychiatry in New York, citing loneliness, isolation, depression, shame, and issues related to sexual performance as areas of concern. What’s happening with AI porn “could be another extension of that,” he adds. …
More recently, Kyle has mostly curbed his intake of adult content. Though AI porn is still in its early days, he considers it “one of the worst technological developments that we have coming up right now” because of its over accessibility. “It’s worse than the real thing.”