In early November 2025, a news story appeared that sparked a variety of responses: a chatbot willing to offer erotic exchanges to those who could prove they were adults. That move, however, overlooked something more subtle: the partner was no longer a body but was reduced to an object among others, immediately available.
The announcement generated mixed reactions—ranging from hasty celebrations to equally noisy warnings—as these devices, promising immediate relief, claim to simplify things where desire becomes entangled. The erotic scene becomes a procedure. The fantasy, a drop-down list. Intimacy, a statistic that aims to anticipate everything. It is about getting what is demanded without residue, without stumbling blocks and without that which made of the encounter a wager more uncertain than efficient.
But desire never asked for such docility. It always left a margin, a detour, a misunderstanding that was impossible to programme. What happens when that rim disappears? The machine's offer is impeccable, but its very impeccability is unsettling: nothing fails, nothing escapes, nothing interrupts. Everything seems arranged so that nothing of the partner touches us too much, not even that which might be uncomfortable or surprising, as if misunderstanding had been removed from the scene.
Thus, an Other emerges, too well-mannered to produce an encounter. In its absolute availability, it reveals what is missing: a body, a presence, a silence without instructions. Also, an opaque zone, that which in the bond never quite fits and which, precisely for that reason, sustains desire. The scaffolding of comfort erodes that blind spot where something of the subject was still at stake without guarantees.
Perhaps the novelty lies not in the artifice, but in the way we surrender to it. Comfort comes at a price: leaving aside that which, in us, cannot be commanded or accommodated. That which does not coincide, that which does not fit, that which does not work. Perhaps that is why the promise of eroticism on demand is as tempting as it is fragile: it makes us believe that we can live without that residue that overflows the will to control, without that unruly piece that, by not fitting in, opened up the very possibility of encounter.
The question remains open: when the partner is reduced to a function without a body, what remains of the desire that advanced thanks to that interstice that no algorithm can close?