The New Sex Economy

Synthetic Desire and the Cult of Real

I told you this was coming.

In AI Unleashed: The Erotic Frontier of Chatbots and Sex, I said every new technology eventually finds a way to sell sex. At the time, it was mostly a curiosity, flirtatious chatbots, harmless experiments, digital blushing. Two years later, it is an industry.

OpenAI now verifies adults for erotica. Elon Musk’s xAI has a “spicy” mode capable of near-explicit video generation. And Kim Kardashian, who once built an empire on hairlessness, is selling thongs with fake pubic hair.

Three different products. One universal truth. Desire is the most scalable business model on earth.

AI Creators Want to Make You Feel Wanted

In Artificial Intelligence: The Disease and the Cure, I said AI would both create the illness and sell the cure. The new “verified erotica” tier from OpenAI is exactly that.

After years of strict moderation, OpenAI now sells “safe” fantasy. It is presented as empowerment. Verified users. Clear consent. Responsible exploration. But make no mistake, this is still marketing.

What OpenAI offers is not intimacy. It is the simulation of it. You can flirt, confide, and explore, but only inside a monetized feedback loop. Your preferences are data. Your vulnerability is inventory.

The fantasy here is not sex but control. The product is safety itself. And the customer is you, submitting your desires for optimization.

xAI’s Spicy Rebellion

Then comes xAI. Musk’s Grok model has taken a sharp turn into the adult market with “spicy mode.” Lingerie-wearing AI companions. Semi-explicit imagery. A promise of freedom that is still carefully fenced.

It is not an accident. The adult industry has always pioneered new media, from VHS to VR. AI porn was inevitable. Musk just did what he always does, monetize transgression.

xAI positions itself as the rebel, offering rawness where competitors promise purity. But rebellion, once monetized, stops being rebellion. It becomes branding. xAI’s “spicy” is not chaos. It is a curated version of it. The company knows exactly how far to go before advertisers run.

As I said in The Digital Fix, algorithms do not persuade us. They condition us. xAI is conditioning a new class of consumer. One who mistakes provocation for authenticity and customization for choice.

Kim Kardashian and the Flesh Frontier

While AI learns to whisper, Kim Kardashian is shouting. Her company Skims launched a faux-hair thong marketed through a tongue-in-cheek retro campaign called “Does the Carpet Match the Drapes?” It came in multiple colors and textures and sold out almost immediately.

The launch collided with a cultural shift already in motion. After years of airbrushed minimalism, fashion media began celebrating what it called the “bush revival.” Models walked runways with merkins. Influencers posted about body hair as liberation. The aesthetic that once demanded smoothness had flipped.

Of course, Kardashian herself is famously hairless, having laser-removed nearly everything. Which makes her pivot to faux fuzz look like hypocrisy. But in marketing terms, it is precision. She knows how to sell both sides of a movement.

Kardashian built her empire on immaculate control. Now she profits from selling imperfection. Each new product—the “Ultimate Nipple Bra,” the “Facial Shapewear,” the faux bush—is not about function. It is about conversation. Skims thrives on contradiction because contradiction drives clicks.

From Clean to Real: The Rebrand of Female Desire

For the last several years, the clean girl aesthetic ruled the algorithm. Minimal makeup, slick buns, beige palettes, and a polished kind of virtue. It was more than a trend. It was a moral code disguised as skincare. To be “clean” meant disciplined. Optimized. Marketable.

But perfection fatigues quickly, and rebellion always follows. The clean girl has been replaced by her messy sister, the “real girl.” She has texture, visible pores, and body hair. She is photographed with crumbs on the counter and chaos in the frame. She is still edited, of course, just less obviously.

Brands did not discover this shift. They designed it. The new aesthetic feels spontaneous but is built from the same machinery as the old one. Skims sells realness in a size small. Glossier rebrands minimalism as “lazy beauty.” Dove calls its airbrushed models “unretouched.”

The clean girl sold control. The real girl sells permission. One demanded discipline. The other promises freedom. Both are products of the same system, a marketplace that turns self-image into a subscription.

The “bush revival” is not revolution. It is renovation. A new coat of authenticity on the same architecture of aspiration.

Shock, Sell, Repeat

In The Digital Fix, I explained how algorithms reward emotional intensity over substance. The Skims campaign is a perfect example of this cycle.

The outrage was instantaneous: part disgust, part fascination, part meme. Critics called the faux-hair thong a parody, a provocation, or a genius marketing stunt. Each reaction pushed the product further into the feed.

Outrage is the most efficient advertising strategy of our time. It is free, self-replicating, and measurable. Every post, every hot take, every stitched reaction video becomes part of the campaign.

Kardashian understands that attention is a currency with no ceiling. Her team doesn’t fight controversy. They plan for it. They know that in a digital marketplace built on clicks, the product is less important than the argument around it.

The Anatomy of Desire

The new sex economy is not defined by sex at all. It is defined by validation.

AI platforms like OpenAI and xAI sell intimacy without risk. They package loneliness as exploration and charge a premium for simulated connection.

Skims sells authenticity without vulnerability. It packages rebellion as self-love and prices it by the inch.

They are two halves of the same pattern. One digital, one physical. Both transactional.

Desire has been stripped down to its simplest exchange: give us your attention, we will give you a feeling. It might be belonging. It might be control. It might just be distraction. Either way, it is measurable, monetizable, and repeatable.

The irony is that the more artificial intimacy becomes, the more obsessed we are with proving what is “real.” That tension fuels the algorithm. It keeps us scrolling between extremes, between fantasy and authenticity, between code and cotton.

Hypocrisy Is The Point

If there is a single truth running through all of this, it is that hypocrisy is no longer a liability. It is the marketing plan.

OpenAI preaches responsibility while selling stimulation.

xAI flaunts rebellion while moderating the results.

Kardashian sells liberation while embodying the standard she pretends to reject.

These contradictions are not oversights. They are the hook. They make the product feel alive, human, unpredictable. The audience participates by taking sides, sharing opinions, and performing outrage. In a culture of continuous commentary, moral friction equals engagement.

As I pointed out in The Belonging Economy, consumers no longer buy things. We buy stories about ourselves. These new stories just happen to be written by algorithms and influencers who already know what we will click next.

What Happens Next

AI has learned how to mimic intimacy. Fashion has learned how to monetize rebellion. Together, they have transformed desire from an emotion into a product category.

Soon, we will see the next iteration. The “realness” trend will mature into a luxury aesthetic. “Unfiltered” will become a premium setting. Synthetic companions will learn to fake imperfection because perfection no longer sells.

We built machines to make us feel wanted. We built brands to make us feel seen. Now both compete for our attention using the same strategy: emotional realism.

The middle path is not abstaining. It is awareness. See the pattern. Understand the pitch. Choose consciously, even when the marketing feels like freedom.

Desire is not dangerous. But in 2025, it is monetized with precision.