Who’s Your Daddy? A Chatbot

The first time Alesandra Madison’s husband incorporated AI into their relationship was in late 2024.

She’d forgotten to do her “nightly kneeling ritual,” and he asked ChatGPT how to properly discipline her. The large language model suggested “a two-in-one punishment,” she says—write 100 lines of “I will remember to kneel for my Dom every night” while kneeling the entire time.

Though the couple started exploring kink in their marriage 15 years ago—they are in a dominant-submissive relationship—the AI-generated punishment was new territory for them.

Since then, Madison, who is 44 and lives in Los Angeles, says she has come to think of AI as “a powerful enhancement tool” for kink. “A lot of the times in dom-sub dynamics, when the submissive misbehaves—if it’s consented to—you will have a punishment. You want something specific to fit the crime, basically. It’s like a fresh set of eyes on your relationship.”

AI represents a unique evolution in how power is distributed for people into bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism—BDSM. The lifestyle structure, as everyone WIRED spoke to for this story noted, is grounded in the core tenets of consent, safety, communication, and trust. But for those dealing with trust issues, or who simply want a nonjudgmental space to ask questions about BDSM, AI is becoming an increasingly appealing option.

“I’ve gotten value out of AI helping me understand myself better as a submissive. I sometimes ask it questions or describe something that feels confusing to me and ask it to help me understand,” one user posted in the r/SubSanctuary subreddit, where discussions involve topics like impact play, the feeling of “being owned,” and how to move on when the relationship has reached its end. Madison says there are different reasons why AI doms appeal to certain subs. They are always available, easily customizable—“You can make them playful or sadistic,” she noted in a video—and there is low risk to exploring for newbies.

But not everyone is on board. In the same subreddit, AI doms were blasted for being “hollow entertainment,” “dangerous,” and “dystopian.” “It can feel like a checklist,” says San Francisco–based sex educator Amp Somers, who is 36 and switches between dom and sub roles, of the demands an AI dom gives out.

As debates swirl and intensify, the marketplace has gone boom. Joi AI is one of the many services—along with Character.AI, Replika, and Soulmaite—that let users create and customize chatbots for BDSM role-play. According to the company, which bills itself as an “AI-lationships” platform, and an antidote to dating apps, its “user base has grown five times in 2025 compared to 2024.” Several sex workers, including Alix Lynx and Jenna Starr, have licensed their likeness to Joi (the company declined to share exact user numbers). Developers are also sprinting to create applications for role-play chatbots that are “not just erotic content spam, but something focused on immersive, intelligent conversation with a dominant persona.” Even Oxy shop, an online BDSM gear retailer for sub men who like to wear chastity cages, has started to offer an AI-driven “BDSM chat” for members, which allows them to indulge in all sorts of dominatrix fantasies; “Surrender to Mandy” or “Submit to Mike,” the page advertises.

Watching porn can be a passive experience, but “an AI chatbot allows people a forum to talk about, express, and articulate their sexual fantasies,” says Carolina Bandinelli, an associate professor at the University of Warwick whose research focuses on the digital culture of love. “The idea that you can program your domination exactly the way you want. That is one of the fantasies underpinning the relationship between humans and AI—the fact that we can shape and model our partner.”