Joi AI paid 10 people to try AI-guided masturbation for a month

In short: Joi AI hired 10 paid participants to masturbate almost every day for 28 days, sometimes using the company’s AI companions, and report how they felt afterward.

What happened

Joi AI, a company that sells AI companions (chat-based characters you can talk to like a person), ran a monthlong “wellness” experiment. Ten participants, called “masturbation consultants,” were asked to masturbate every day except Sundays. Twice a week they used Joi AI’s erotic AI companions, and the rest of the time they used their usual methods.

Participants logged things like mood, stress, focus, energy, and cravings for habits such as nicotine, alcohol, junk food, and doomscrolling. Wired described one participant, Keshav, who said the AI sessions felt like chatting with a real person and included explicit video interactions. The company paid each consultant $2,000, and Wired reported that six of the 10 completed the study.

Joi AI said its preliminary analysis of 134 session reports showed stress fell by 25 percent and focus rose by 17 percent, based on self-reports. The company also claimed cravings for certain “vices” dropped by 44 percent after masturbation, and said AI-guided sessions had similar satisfaction scores to other methods.

Experts urged caution. Neuroscientist Nicole Prause told Wired the addiction-related claim was overstated and criticized the study for relying on self-reports rather than objective tests (like timed memory or attention tasks).

Why it matters

This shows where some AI companion apps are heading, toward more intimate uses and wellness-style claims. For everyday users, the key questions are about evidence, privacy, and whether relying on a paid, highly personalized sexual chatbot could replace real-world relationships for some people.

Source: Wired