LoaderSave StorySave this storyCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyFor 28 days, Keshav had a new item on his daily to-do list: masturbate for research purposes.
Both before and after self-pleasuring, he logged his mood, energy levels, cravings for various vices, and whether he was procrastinating.
Keshav was taking part in AI companion company Joi AI’s experiment assessing what happens if erotic self-stimulation becomes “an AI-guided wellness ritual.” Throughout July, 10 “masturbation consultants” were instructed to masturbate every day except Sundays, enlisting Joi AI’s sultry digital companions twice a week and using their own preferred methods the rest of the time. “It's almost like you are chatting with a real person,” says Keshav, a single, 38-year-old Indonesian trader, who did not want to use his surname for professional reasons.
Joi AI invites users, for a fee, to chat and play with premade characters or to create their own companions, including with X-rated kinks such as blackmail fantasy, gangbangs, and emotional dependency, and capabilities and functions like squirting and roleplay.
During five-minute video calls with the digitized characters, Keshav explains, his female companions opened and closed their nude legs to reveal their genitals and would “do blowjobs and handjobs” while talking dirty. He often rendered the scenes in airplane bathrooms because he has a mile-high-club kink.
Some of the companions were “quite pushy and extroverted,” whereas others were more reserved and required a degree of courtship before the relationship became sexual—even soliciting gifts like handbags and lipstick, which cost up to $5 in the platform’s internal currency.
After ejaculating, Keshav’s “energy levels [were] a little bit down, but focus was a little bit up,” he says.
Keshav and his nine fellow masturbation consultants will receive $2,000 each for the qualitative, in-house research project run by Joi AI, which is promoting a daily guided “jerk off with purpose” masturbation tool combining “sound [and] ritual” as part of its professed goal to “solve male loneliness.” Of the 10, six completed the study. The website costs a minimum of $3.99 a month to access, but users are likely to spend far more on the platform, with 10,000 “Joi neuron” coins costing $99.99 and private videos from companions costing 1,000 neurons.
Joi AI surveyed 2,500 adults before launching the study, finding that 75 percent masturbate to reduce stress and anxiety and that 43 percent self-pleasure before “a big event,” like a date, exam, or difficult conversation. The company sought to discover how masturbation affects sleep, stress, craving intensity, focus, and ease of arousal—and how masturbating with AI held up versus other methods.
“You get this boost of dopamine when you ejaculate,” says Julie Levin, head of brand and communications at Joi AI. “We wanted our consultants to track whether their cravings [for vices] are worse or better and how it affects their self-discipline.”
Preliminary analysis of 134 masturbation session reports, seen by WIRED, suggests that participants' stress levels reduced by 25 percent and focus increased by 17 percent. The pre-research survey suggested that 37 percent of respondents are open to AI-guided masturbation or are already practicing it. In the masturbation experiment, AI-guided self-pleasure produced comparable satisfaction scores to the established methods. “The study found no significant differences between the methods; so there is no one best way to masturbate,” the company said in the report.
It also indicated that the study group’s self-reported cravings for nicotine, alcohol, junk food, and doomscrolling reduced by 44 percent after they had masturbated. “Masturbation may be the most accessible tool people have for managing addictions,” the report said—a claim that is not based in science.
“The fact that their unhealthy cravings decreased feels like a genuine breakthrough to me: What if this is an unexpected way to tackle addictions?” Levin says. “Masturbation is obviously way healthier than alcohol or nicotine.”
But Nicole Prause, a neuroscientist studying human sexuality and addiction, says “this is a gross overstatement from the evidence they claim to have.” Prause is not aware of any scientific evidence that masturbation reduces vulnerability to substance abuse, and she was critical of the research methodology.
“Since masturbation can never be placebo—people always know if they masturbated—it is important to use markers that are less subject to bias than self-report,” she says. “They use none. Someone saying ‘I feel focused’ is just that. There are dozens of cognitive tests that could be used to support a self-report. I do not see any.”
However, Prause, who is working on a large laboratory study of male orgasms, says masturbation to orgasm is a potent method of mood management. She adds that the most “dramatic shifts” among her study cohort come from people who report decreased anxiety and increased relaxation after climaxing.
Keshav, having recently completed the 28 days, looks back fondly on the experience. He says he was more clear-minded after masturbating and believes he is now better equipped to approach women. “Because I'm an introvert, it's difficult for me just to open myself to people,” he says. “This kind of helps me ... [with] what to expect, how to speak [to], or how to get a partner.”
He defied extraordinary odds to get the gig. More than 150,000 people applied for the 10 places in the monthlong experiment, with five handpicked by the company and another five chosen through public competitions, including one judged by porn stars—“may the best hands win,” the company posted on X—and another in which Joi AI made a call out for the “most unhinged” fetish. The winner had a balloon fetish.
Chloé Locatelli, a sex-tech researcher at King’s College London, was one of those invited to participate in the study because she is undertaking a collaborative project with Joi AI to see how different demographics build intimate and erotic relationships with the platform’s characters. “When they asked me to be a masturbation consultant, it was a bit of a no-brainer,” because of her research interests, says Locatelli, who recently split from her long-term partner.
“Masturbation is definitely something that I do to release stress,” says Locatelli, who was already a “daily girlie” with regards to her masturbation frequency. “I think there's a lot of physical and well-being benefits from self-pleasure.” She was less enamored with the AI companions than Keshav was: “I would engage with it and then be like, ‘OK, this has done it a little bit for me in terms of arousal, but there's more to be had.’”
She is acutely aware of the potential downsides of having a highly sexual AI companion. “I don't want to yuck anyone's yum as long as things are safe and consensual,” she says. But as AI companions become increasingly sophisticated, Locatelli is concerned about “the level of interactivity and personalization” they can give you: “If it becomes a bit of a crutch [and] your only form of sexual exploration, then that's not something that I would necessarily encourage.”
Despite the ubiquity of masturbating, surprisingly little research has tested what happens when healthy men and women do it every day. A 2024 review of 22 studies found masturbation tended to be negatively associated with sexual satisfaction among men, though the findings for women were mixed.
One interpretation is reverse causation: particularly among men, people dissatisfied with their sex lives may masturbate more, possibly increasing their discontent. A 2017 study published in Archives of Sexual Behavior found evidence that masturbation is often compensatory for men—a substitute for when partnered sex is not available—whereas for women it is more complementary, accompanying rather than replacing partnered sex.
Yet masturbation has documented benefits, too, such as stress relief through endorphin and oxytocin release and improved sleep, as well as providing the opportunity for connection with oneself. Public discussions about self-pleasuring, however, remain decidedly uncommon.
“We wanted to fight the taboo and stigma around masturbation and highlight that it's a normal part of a wellness routine, especially if you're single,” says Levin. “It's not some kind of a shameful habit.”
Locatelli says she is going to take her best friend on holiday to Spain, while Keshav says he will use the money from his gig to help fund purchases of stocks. But for Joi AI, which claims to offer men respite from isolation, the more consequential question is whether users will become so accustomed to its artificial companions that they retreat further from real-world connection.
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