You might be familiar with what an orgasm feels like but what about what one looks like?
For those curious, two sexual wellness companies, Lovehoney and Womanizer, have come together to develop the world’s first artificial intelligence (AI) generated images of real human orgasms.
If you’re wondering just how, exactly, AI was able to create an image of a physical sensation, we can explain.
The study involved five men and five women wearing heart-monitoring ECG band sensors while experiencing an orgasm with sex toys (the women used a Womanizer Pleasure Air toy and the men used the Arcwave male masturbator).
With every heartbeat, moment of build and release collected, the data was then passed to software engineers and developers, who harnessed the power of AI to transform the data into visuals.
The result is a revealing series of images depicting a wide spectrum of orgasm types.
Elisabeth Neumann, Lovehoney sexologist and User Research Manager, is not surprised by the differences in the images, explaining that orgasms are different for everyone.
“Orgasms can be powerful, intense and earth-shaking, while others are soft, tickling or surprising. Regardless, they are impossible to ignore!” she says.
By giving us a visual representation of the many different types of orgasms people can experience, it changes the old, and rather limited theory that there’s one ‘right’ or ‘normal’ type of orgasm.
Considering that a recent Lovehoney and Womanizer survey saw people most commonly describe an orgasm as ‘volcanic eruption’, ‘firework’, and ‘shooting star’, the images show that orgasms can be much more varied than that.
According to Neumann, “Orgasms are as unique as fingerprints – a lively mix of colours, energies, and emotions.”
Interestingly, gender also doesn’t seem to play a huge part in what type of orgasms people are experiencing. In other words, women don’t experience ‘one type’ of orgasm while men experience another—in fact, a number of the images actually show just how similar male and female orgasms can be.
At the same time, gender differences are still there—just not in the orgasms themselves. Surprisingly, it was the technology itself, that still held the outdated gender basis’s.
“You can still see a gender bias in AI’s depiction of the female orgasm with more traditionally ‘feminine-coded’ colours. This reflects how deeply AI is shaped and influenced by societal norms and stereotypes, and might reproduce them,” Neumann says.
But perhaps even more importantly, the images also provide a valuable insight for sex toy manufacturers, who rely on information like this to design effective toys.
“It’s a really exciting time for sex toy manufacturers. AI and emerging tech present an opportunity to sense the body’s responses, and harness that data to intelligently drive a sex toy exactly the way that the body needs it to operate, based on movements, reactions and previous learning,” says Chantelle Otten, sex and relationship expert for Lovehoney.
“Of course, manufacturers will need to find a way to do this safely and without compromising people’s data, but there is so much potential and so much exciting tech to look forward to which will enhance pleasure for everybody.”
You can see all of the images on the Lovehoney website.
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