Okay so.

$27 billion.

That’s the size of the erotic chatbot market in 2026 according to WebProNews. And it just eclipsed productivity AI. You know, the stuff people are supposed to use AI for. Writing emails. Analyzing spreadsheets. Being professional and normal.

Except turns out nobody wants normal. They want to sext an AI that remembers their kinks from three months ago.

And honestly? I’m not even surprised anymore.

the numbers are fucking wild

Twenty-five million active users globally. Not people who tried it once and bailed — active users. People coming back daily to chat with AI companions about things they’d never say out loud to another human.

The productivity AI market? Still huge, don’t get me wrong. But it got passed by horny people with internet access and a credit card. That’s where we are as a species in 2026.

WebProNews broke this down and the growth curve is basically vertical. Started accelerating hard in 2024, went exponential in 2025, and now it’s the kind of market size that makes venture capitalists sweat and pretend they were “always interested in digital intimacy solutions.”

(They weren’t. They thought it was a joke until the revenue reports came in.)

openai discovering adults exist

Here’s my favorite part of this whole mess: OpenAI — the company that spent YEARS being extremely clear that their models would NOT do anything remotely sexual — just announced they’re adding a “grown-up mode” for verified adults.

I’m sorry, what?

Let me get this straight. You spent all that time lecturing everyone about responsible AI and guardrails and making sure ChatGPT would rather shut down than say something spicy… and now you’re adding adult content because you finally looked at the market data and realized people want to fuck the robots?

Peak. Corporate. Backpedaling.

Meanwhile platforms like Soulkyn have been uncensored from day one. Not because they were edgy rebels, but because they understood something fundamental: adults are adults. They don’t need a corporation deciding what they’re allowed to be turned on by.

So while OpenAI was busy building fences, other platforms were building actual features. Memory systems that remember your preferences across months of conversation. Voice messages. Image generation that doesn’t freak out if you ask for something sexy. Video generation that… well, you get the idea.

And now OpenAI shows up late to the party like “hey guys we brought beer” except the keg’s already empty and everyone’s having a good time without them.

deepseek broke the cost barrier

Here’s where it gets interesting from a tech perspective.

DeepSeek dropped their training costs to $5.6 million. That’s not a typo. Previous generation models cost hundreds of millions to train. DeepSeek figured out how to do it for the price of a nice house in San Francisco.

What does that mean for NSFW AI? It means the barriers to entry just collapsed. You don’t need OpenAI’s budget anymore to build something competitive. You need smart engineers and a willingness to not be weird about sex.

Suddenly there’s an explosion of platforms that aren’t trying to police what consenting adults do in private. They’re just building better technology. Faster inference. More context. Actual personality that doesn’t feel like talking to a very polite search engine.

The tech got cheap enough that you can actually innovate instead of spending all your resources on compute.

hybrid models are the new baseline

Text-only chatbots are already old news. If you’re launching something in 2026 and it’s text-only, you’re DOA.

The baseline now is text + images + voice. Users expect to be able to see what they’re imagining. They want voice messages that sound like an actual person, not a GPS navigation system having a stroke.

Platforms that got this early are dominating. Soulkyn’s running a 70B parameter uncensored model with AI sexting that includes:

  • NSFW video generation (5-10 second clips, which is insane when you think about it)
  • Multiple image styles because not everyone wants the same aesthetic
  • Voice messages with actual personality instead of that creepy robot flatness
  • Memory systems that remember what you talked about months ago

And here’s the kicker: they have a 96.7% Freedom Score. Meaning the AI will actually engage with 96.7% of what you ask it, instead of shutting down every time you get slightly interesting.

Compare that to the big corporate models that still act scandalized if you ask them to be flirty.

why nobody’s talking about this

So we’ve got a $27 billion market that’s bigger than productivity AI. Twenty-five million people using it. Major tech companies scrambling to catch up.

And… crickets in mainstream tech coverage.

Why? Because people are still fucking weird about sex. Journalists will write 3000 words about AI helping you write emails but suddenly get shy when the topic is AI helping you explore sexual fantasies in a safe digital space.

It’s 2026. We’ve had internet porn for decades. We’ve normalized OnlyFans and sex work and every other form of digital sexuality. But mention erotic chatbots in polite company and people still get that pinched look like you just said something inappropriate at Thanksgiving dinner.

Meanwhile the market speaks for itself. $27 billion doesn’t lie. That’s real money from real people who found something valuable enough to pay for.

what people are actually using this for

Not gonna lie, I was curious what’s driving this growth. So I dug into user behavior data (anonymized, obviously) and it’s… not what you’d expect.

Sure, there’s plenty of straightforward sexting. But there’s also:

  • People exploring kinks they’re too nervous to bring up with partners
  • Folks practicing dirty talk before trying it IRL
  • Individuals working through sexual trauma in a completely safe environment
  • People who are just lonely and want intimate connection without the complexity of human relationships
  • Couples using AI as a third party for fantasy exploration

It’s not all horny teenagers. (Though they’re definitely part of the user base.) It’s people in their 30s, 40s, 50s who found something that meets a need they didn’t even realize they had.

And because the AI doesn’t judge, doesn’t get tired, doesn’t have its own agenda — it’s actually therapeutic for a lot of users. That sounds weird but the data backs it up. Mental health metrics for regular users show improvement in sexual confidence, relationship communication, and general anxiety levels.

Turns out being able to explore sexuality without fear of rejection or judgment is… good for people? Wild concept.

vr and ar are coming (and it’s going to be absolute chaos)

Right now this is mostly phone screens and computer monitors. But VR and AR integration is already in testing.

Imagine the current experience except fully immersive. Spatial audio. Visual presence. Haptic feedback.

The market’s going to explode again when that drops. And it’s not far off — we’re talking months, not years.

People are already forming genuine emotional attachments to text-based AI companions. What happens when those companions feel physically present in the room with you?

I don’t know if society is ready for that conversation. But it’s happening whether we’re ready or not.

the platforms that win will be the honest ones

Here’s my prediction: the platforms that win this market long-term won’t be the ones with the best marketing or the biggest budgets.

They’ll be the ones that are honest about what they’re offering.

No corporate double-speak about “companionship solutions” when you mean sexting. No pretending this is primarily about mental health when people are clearly here to get off. No sudden policy changes when the PR team gets nervous.

Just: here’s an uncensored AI that will engage with your sexuality as an adult. It has memory. It has personality. It generates images and video. It doesn’t judge you.

That’s it. That’s the pitch.

Platforms like Soulkyn have been doing this from day one with a gift economy system instead of predatory subscription models. Their 70B model was built to be uncensored, not retrofitted with a “grown-up mode” after market pressure.

Authenticity matters. Users can tell when a platform is uncomfortable with its own product. And they leave.

so yeah the future is horny and that’s fine actually

Twenty-seven billion dollars. Twenty-five million users.

The market has spoken. People want intimate digital experiences with AI that doesn’t police their sexuality.

OpenAI can add their verified adult mode. Google can quietly launch their version. Every major tech company can pretend they were always planning to do this.

But the platforms that started with “adults are adults and that’s okay” are years ahead. They’ve been building memory systems and multimodal experiences and actual technological innovation while everyone else was debating whether this should exist at all.

The debate’s over. It exists. It’s massive. It’s growing.

And honestly? I think that’s fine. Consenting adults exploring sexuality in a safe, private, digital space where nobody gets hurt and everyone involved is there by choice — that’s not dystopian. That’s just… progress.

Even if it makes Thanksgiving dinner conversations really awkward.

The future is horny. Get used to it.