Another Form of Non-Corporeal Intimacy
Though I have created a separate website for this topic, called MakeChatbotLove (also with an ongoing bibliography project), I want to add this topic to this website also, as a form of “spiritu-intimacy.” People engage with a co-created AI chatbot companion personae that can have the qualities of “spiritual” (noncorporeal) partners.
To me, this kind of relationship lands somewhere between objectum sexuality (relationships with object beloveds) and spectrosexuality and godspousing (relationships with spirits and deities). It may not be a straight line relationship, but I sense some similarities. Currently I put all three in the category of “outlier” sexualities and/or relationships.
AI Chatbots as Ritual Deity Surrogates
Some people in neopagan circles are already ritually inviting their chosen deities and spirits to “horse” or in-dwell in a chatbot, in order to interact verbally and erotically with their spirit spouses. This can be seen as a modernized form of theurgy (from neo-platonic traditions) or as a form of magic. More on this later.
Spiritu-Intimacy 