Why is AI Porn Wrong?
The Harm Principle, The Image of God, And Reframing Sexual Desire
Meet Lexi
Lexi’s story, which was recently featured in The U.S. Sun, is getting a lot of attention. She is pretty and smart which is how she is able to generate $30,000 a month being a professional girlfriend. She likes to discuss family, the weather, and small talk about how your day is going. If you are lonely and need a girlfriend to text you, send you voice messages and pictures throughout your day, Lexi is here for you. She claims to possesses a unique ability to make “strong, emotional connections” with her boyfriends. This must be true because she also receives about 20 marriage proposals a month. There is only one catch: she’s not real.
Lexi Love pictured above is an AI generated chatbot. As you can see from her pictures (some of which are a little too hot for TV) she is a thin, pretty blonde whose pictures look indistinguishable from that of a real human woman. Apparently, her voicemails and emails are so convincing that some of her admirers believe she is a real person, hence the marriage proposals. The article also reports that many of these men have emailed the company named “Foxy AI” who created her demanding to meet her. “Strong, emotional connections” indeed.
The Rise of AI Porn
AI pornography’s dominance is happening at warp speed and is disproportionately affecting women. Euronews reports,
“A comprehensive report into deepfakes in 2023 found that deepfake pornography makes up 98 per cent of all deepfake videos found online, while 99 per cent of the victims targeted by deepfake pornography are women… Across the top ten dedicated deepfake pornography websites there have been more than 303 million video views, which the analysts say shows how widespread and popular such content is becoming”1
Reading this, three things become clear: 1. Almost all deepfake AI generated videos found online are pornographic, 2. Almost all of the victims of these deepfake AI porn videos are women, and 3. The number of these deepfake porn videos is growing exponentially.
, in an excellent article at Digital Liturgies said it well, “Porn’s future is post-human.”Quick clarification on porn and gender. In this article, I will assume what seems pretty clear from the numbers, that although men and women both look at porn, porn viewers and creators are disproportionately men, and those who are victimized by porn are disproportionately women. So at times I’ll use gender-neutral language, and at other times I’ll focus on the how porn affects men and women differently.2
Hide Your Kids, Hide Your Wife
The story about Lexi reminded me of another news story I recently saw. NBC News recently warned that an incoming flood of AI generated sexual images of children is coming and it will be difficult to stop. They offered two recent reports as examples:
“In a first-of-its-kind case in South Korea, a man was sentenced in September to 2 1/2 years in prison for using artificial intelligence to create 360 virtual child abuse images, according to the Busan District Court in the country’s southeast. In some cases, kids are using these tools on each other. At a school in southwestern Spain, police have been investigating teens’ alleged use of a phone app to make their fully dressed schoolmates appear nude in photos.”
What do all these stories have to do with each other? What effect will AI porn have on an already porn-addicted culture? Why is porn wrong in the first place? Can AI baptize pornography and make it ok? How are Christians supposed to understand these developments and how can we offer our world a better, truer understanding of sex?
Things have been getting pretty weird over the last several years, but they’re about to get a whole lot weirder.
The (Christian) Harm Principle
Philosopher John Stuart Mill is famously known for the “Harm Principle.” “The harm principle says people should be free to act however they wish unless their actions cause harm to somebody else.”3 You’ll often hear the Harm Principle used in the secular world to justify porn, “What’s the harm? She’s getting paid, it’s consensual, who is being harmed here?”
Growing up, the average young Christian man will hear a common refrain regarding porn, “Hey, just remember, that’s someone’s daughter.” Sometimes if your pastor or friend is really smart, they will bring the issue closer to home and say, “what if that was your mom or your sister, would you be ok with other men watching that?”
I’m not knocking this approach; it is biblically sound reasoning on why we shouldn’t watch pornography. It has been helpful and effective for me. It’s personal, and it works. It brings the truth close to home and since you naturally love your mom and your sister, this reality about porn may start to bother you. This approach is a good way to get boys and men to think in a deeper way about porn and question their porn use.
One of the main reasons pornography is wrong is because it violates the image of God in another person. When you lust after another human being, you reduce them down to their sexual value alone. You dehumanize them and violate God’s image in them. And in doing this, you also violate the image of God in you.
The “that’s someone’s daughter” approach works because you realize that you’re objectifying a real person with dignity and value, and that feels wrong. But when this approach is used alone and is isolated from other important biblical truths about sex, it can begin to function as a sort of “Christian Harm Principle.” It can become simply a Christian way to say that something is wrong primarily because it hurts someone else. And though it is good reasoning on why one shouldn’t look at pornography, pretty soon, it may not be good enough.
Do you see where this is going?
But what happens when you’re not violating the image of God in another person, because the image you’re viewing isn’t of a real person? What if what you’re looking at isn’t a human, but a fake and photorealistic representation of a human?
Most people would understand the story above about the teens in Spain who were photoshopping pictures of their classmates onto adult nude bodies as a clear violation. It is both nonconsensual and the face of a real person (a child), so it is clearly desecrating God’s image in another person on multiple levels. I saw another story recently where a Snapchat influencer used her own face to generate an AI sex chatbot.4 This may seem less clear at first because it is voluntary and consensual, but is still a clear violation because it is truly her face, and since she is a real human being, God’s image in her is implicated.
But what if the sexual images on the screen are not of real people at all? What if they’re completely fabricated and made up like Lexi Love? Why is that wrong?
Artificial Sintelligence
AI pornography is wrong for a least 4 reasons.
1. Because it intentionally offends God’s created order and it exists outside of His natural design for sex, this makes it sexual sin.
2. Sexual sin is uniquely disordered because it is a sin against our own bodies.
3. Because, even though it doesn’t violate the image of God in another person, it violates the image of God in the viewer himself, and
4. And because, even though it may not be sinning against a woman, it’s dehumanizing and results in sinning against women.
All pornography, whether it shows real people or AI generated images, offends the true nature, essence and purpose of sex. Sexual desire is a good thing, God made us as sexual beings. But God made sexual desire for something and it is aimed at a very specific purpose: lifelong bonding and intimacy between the couple and the procreation, protection and education of children, all for the glory of God. Any time sex as God designed it occurs outside of its proper context, sexual sin happens (Romans 1). All pornography takes sex from the safe place of God’s design where it is good for us, and turns sex into something that is unsafe and bad for us.
All sin offends God. But sexual sin is uniquely offensive to God because it violates our own bodies (1 Cor 6:13-20). Our culture may be confused about what a person is, but God is not. The traditional Christian understanding of the person is that we are embodied souls, or body-soul composites; equally body, equally soul. You don’t have a body, you are your body. Our bodies were made in God’s image and Christianity maintains a high view of the body. And God hates when we vandalize His craftsmanship.
AI porn is also wrong because even though it may not desecrate the image of God in another person, it desecrates the image of God in the viewer himself. Porn abstracts sex; it moves us farther from reality. Regular porn with real people does this, it takes something that is supposed to be personal and concrete, something that happens physically between two married people, and reduces it down to pixels of strangers on a screen. AI porn further abstracts sex. Not only are you not physically experiencing something with another person, and seeing sex as pixels on screen, you’re not even seeing real people. All pornography exchanges something that is real and filled with meaning and intended for lifelong bonding and procreation, for a momentary and lonely counterfeit. Like C.S. Lewis once said, like ignorant children, we trade a holiday at the sea for making mud pies in a slum. Porn is inherently self-destructive to the viewer himself.
Porn with real humans warps our mind; it trains us to objectify people and see people as things to be used instead of people to be loved, and it destroys a true and healthy understanding of what sex is. But the question we should be asking now is, how will artificially produced pornography affect the way we see people and understand sex?
Also, just because viewing AI porn is not a sin against a real person, doesn’t mean it is not sinning against real people. Again, porn shapes the way we see and understand sex and other people. Even though the AI images may not be of real people, you are still training your mind to reduce humans down to their sexual value alone.
The point is, you may not be violating the image of God in a woman, but you are certainly violating the image of God in women.
Private or Public?
It can be tempting for people to think of porn in terms of the harm principle: as a private act you do alone in your bedroom that doesn’t harm anyone. But this is simply not the case. What happens in private spills into public. For example, younger generations today who have been raised watching porn have less sex today than in years past, and when they do have sex, it is more violent and antisocial.
Louise Perry goes over this in her excellent book “A Case Against the Sexual Revolution.” Perry sheds light on the strong correlation between pornography and violent sexual behavior. She discusses the rise of concerning sexual behaviors like choking and spitting especially in younger generations who grew up with porn, not to mention the abuse of women inside and outside of the industry, or the erectile dysfunction that can result in young men who have been addicted to porn from a young age. This is just a small sample of ways that porn affects public life.
A pornified culture has led to a culture of abuse and rape.5 Porn is far from a private act that doesn’t harm anyone. As a culture, it seems we are becoming self-aware of this, even if slowly and in small ways. For instance, an Oklahoma Senator named Dusty Devers has proposed legislation to ban pornography completely in his state.6 As AI porn grows in popularity and continues to affect public life, Christians will need a cultural apologetic of sex that can address these issues in a new and profound way.
Elevate and Reframe
I wanted to provide one more example of the kind of sexual moral issues coming our way and have us practice becoming better cultural apologists. As I’ve discussed before, borrowing from Dr. John Seel who is an expert on Christian cultural engagement, we need to learn how to reframe and elevate these conversations. This one is a doozy, but let’s give it a try.
Kentucky Senator Karen Berg in a recent hearing testified that she has seen research that suggests that pedophiles (she uses the new, Orwellian term “Minor Attracted Persons”) who use child sex dolls are less likely to victimize real children. Click here to watch her testimony. She goes on to say that the research is limited, but suggests that using the child sex dolls “decreases their [pedophiles] proclivity to go out and attack children. It gives them a release that makes them less likely to…”
First, it can be easy to cringe and dismiss people like Senator Berg out of disgust, and that is a fair response. But let’s try to dig deeper and get better at understanding why she is wrong. A good cultural apologist will be able to calmly explain what is wrong with Berg’s thinking to someone in our world who may not have the same response as us, and persuade them to a truer position.
The italicized portion of Berg’s quote above is the dead giveaway, “…it gives them a release that makes them less likely to…” Here, we can elevate the conversation by pointing out the unspoken premise and asking the underlying question, “how does sexual desire really work?” Senator Berg is clearly assuming and operating within a Freudian frame of sexual desire, where sex is a physical need like food or water and sexual desire is like a steam engine where pressure builds up and needs to be released periodically in order for us to be healthy and normal.
Like all heresies, the Freudian frame is widely accepted as true because it has some truth to it. It makes sense to people intuitively; it’s true, but not true enough. There are three ways the Freudian frame misunderstands, sex and sexual desire: 1. It sees sex as a physical need like food and water, 2. It equates sex and sexual fulfillment with our humanity, and 3. It understands sexual desire to function like a steam engine where you need to release some pressure every once in a while in order to be healthy and normal.
1. Sex = physical need
Our sexual desires can certainly feel like physical needs at times. They have an appetitive dimension to them. But sex is not a physical need. Christ was fully human and He never had sex. Many people abstain from sex for all sorts of reasons and are perfectly healthy and normal. Instead of sex being a physical need where you crave some relief, the Bible shows us that sex is a gift, and if it happens in its proper context, it is full of blessing and meaning.
2. Sex = humanity
A Freudian frame equates expressing your sexual desires with your humanity. This is why people like Senator Berg feel the need to try and find a way for pedophiles to express their disordered sexual desires in way that doesn’t harm a child. According to a Freudian frame, if these pedophiles can’t express their “authentic” sexual desires, then they will not be able to live a truly human life; not being able to express your authentic sexual desires is oppressive and dehumanizing.
But the bible shows us that although our sexuality is a deep part of who we are, it is not all of who we are. It doesn’t really make sense to equate sexuality with our humanity. Someone who doesn’t experience sexual desire at all isn’t not human, and someone who experiences a less-than-normal amount of sexual desire isn’t less human. Alternatively, someone who experiences an abundance of sexual desire isn’t more human than the first two.
The image of God in us is preeminent in what makes us human and gives us value and dignity. God’s image in us is pre-sexual. Genesis 1:27 makes it clear that God made us in His own image and then as male and female:
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
A Freudian lens makes sex and sexual desire into a god, it conflates sex with our humanity and the meaning of life. The bible presents a different picture and a different order. God first tells us that we are made in His image and that this is the essence of our value, dignity and humanity. Then we are gifted sexed bodies and sexual desires with a specific design and for a specific purpose. And although sin entered the world and corrupted the original plan, Christ comes to make all things new, including our sexuality. Sex is an important part of our story, but it is a part, not the whole.
3. Sexual desire = steam engine
Unlike a Freudian frame that tells us desire is like a steam engine where we just need to let off a little steam here and there, the bible gives us a different picture of desire. The bible tells us that desire is like a sower, a seed and a harvest. You reap what you sow. The bible teaches us that if we indulge our sinful desires, we will end up with even more sinful desires. Galatians 6:8-9 reminds us:
“For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”
So rather than seeing desire as a steam engine, we should see it like a fire. The more wood you throw on, the bigger it will grow. If it keeps growing, it will consume you. Or like a wolf, the more you feed it, the more ravenous it will become. More and more that wolf will expect that food you’ve been giving it. Pretty soon, it will devour you.
Practicing virtue begets more virtue, practicing vice begets more vice.
Solomon in Ecclesiastes 2 shows us what happens when we never say no to our sinful desires:
“And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure… Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after the wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”
When we indulge our sinful desires and “keep our heart from no pleasure” we end up empty handed and playing a game we can never win. Eventually, we become a slave to our desires. This is how Satan tempts us, he offers us the whole world but delivers only death, destruction, and nothingness.
The words of Christ to the woman at the well in John 4 come to mind:
“Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’"
A Freudian frame offers a short-term and truncated view of sexual desire where you are never truly satisfied. The bible offers us a bigger, more beautiful picture with a long-term vision, a Redeemer, and a truly fulfilling payoff.
We don’t need to keep going back to the steam engine to release pressure, we need a new engine.
Final Thoughts
AI porn is wrong because it offends God’s natural created order and design for sex. It rips sex out of its context and makes it meaningless and unsafe. Any time sex happens outside of its intended context, sexual sin is present. All sin is bad, but sexual sin is uniquely disordered because God says it is a sin against our own bodies. AI porn is also wrong because even though it doesn’t violate the image of God in another person, it violates the image of God in us as the viewer. And although it may not be sin against a person, it pollutes our mind and leads to sinning against people broadly.
AI generated porn is growing in popularity and legitimization. But it is just one of about a zillion ethical and moral issues headed our way. We should prepare ourselves. Our theology will need to be big enough and strong enough to handle these complex issues. We need a good answer for “what’s the harm?” especially as AI generated pornography proliferates. We are going to need more than an isolated Christian Harm Principle, because even though “that’s someone’s daughter” is good counsel, pretty soon, it won’t be good enough.
As our world drifts further from the natural law and God’s design for sex, and fixates on AI and pornography specifically, Christians are going to need to become better cultural apologists. We need to develop the skill of elevating and reframing these conversations, both identifying the unspoken premises and asking the underlying questions. When it comes to false understandings of sex and desire, just like someone who is trained to identify counterfeit money, we will need to be able to spot a fake when we see one.
Only with an enormous amount of God’s grace and wisdom, and a well-constructed biblical worldview will we be prepared for what is coming.
Big thank you to my good friend Joel Howard for featuring me on his ministry’s website, Connected and Useful, click here to check that out and please also browse his site and check out the books he has published and the albums he has written and recorded. Joel is enormously gifted and has been a friend for such a long time. He continues to encourage me and help me immensely. I so appreciate him reading, giving feedback, and sharing my work on his site. Thank you, brother.
Thank you to those who continue to read my posts. I am very much an amateur writer. And as someone who is a beginner and just trying to collect and organize my thoughts, I receive a lot of help. Wendell Berry has this great quote about intellectual property where he says, “As I understand it, I am being paid only for my work in arranging the words; my property is that arrangement. The thoughts in this book, on the contrary, are not mine. They came freely to me, and I give them freely away.” that's how I feel about writing, but especially with this post, I borrowed so many thoughts from others and received so much help that I felt it would be wrong to not at least mention a few things. My beautiful wife Andrea for so patiently nd intently listening to me drone on and on all the time about the same things and giving me helpful feedback. My buddy has helped me a lot with editing in general. My pastor Greg helped me with the reframing of desire part of this. I also keep borrowing parts from Dr. John Seel’s framework for Christian cultural engagement. So many of the thoughts in this article have come from listening to the great Catholic theologian and political troll Michael Knowles. I first had the thought for this by listening to C.R. Wiley on the Theology Pugcast the other week. Wiley is an editor at Touchstone Magazine and their latest issue is on AI. Also, I am writing this partly for the men’s book study I am a part of at my church, we are going through Ray Ortlund’s book “The Death of Porn" which has also been formative. Anyway, I just felt led to say all of this to give credit and show that all of my writing is always a product of a strange collage of thinkers, both friends I know personally and some I have never met. Anyway, thank you all.
Thank you so much for reading. If you read this and have a thought, please leave a comment here or email me (below). My primary motivation for writing is to create more good conversation around cultural, theological and political issues. I would love to hear your thoughts.
jeffreycharlescaldwell@gmail.com
“Porn is inherently self-destructive.” 🎯 Before AI, it already felt like a demonic tsunami, now I wonder how the world won’t completely drowned in it. I don’t think I’m alone in this opinion— pornography is a greater threat to the human soul than all other addictions combined. Thanks for shining a light on this.