Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - Unzipping AI: Sex, Critical Thinking, and the Limits of Technology

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

What happens when we start asking AI our most vulnerable questions about sex, sexuality, and sexual health? In this episode of Unzipping Taboos, we talk candidly about why so many people turn to tools like ChatGPT for answers they’re too embarrassed—or too afraid—to ask out loud, and why that makes digital literacy more important than ever. From biased or incomplete information to the loss of nuance, tone, and human context, we unpack where AI can help and where it falls short—especially around sensitive topics like sexual orientation, reproductive anatomy, and sexual health.We also explore why “trust but verify” needs to be the baseline when using AI for anything related to our bodies. Along the way, we look at real examples of inaccurate AI-generated anatomy, discuss why stigma drives people toward anonymous tech solutions, and share safer, more reliable ways to get accurate sex education.This episode isn’t anti-technology—but it is pro-critical thinking, pro-privacy, and firmly rooted in the belief that AI should supplement human expertise, not replace it. If you’ve ever wondered whether AI is a safe or reliable place to learn about sex, this conversation is for you.If you have a story, thoughts and/or a topic or question for Dr. Sue and Charlie please share your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestionsIf you want to ask Dr Sue a sex question for the weekly Q&A you can submit it here: Ask a question

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. We're here to explore the questions you've always been curious about, but don't always feel comfortable asking out loud. No judgment, no shame, just open, honest conversation. So zip down and let's get candid. Before we get started, I do want to let you all know that we have now partnered with jackandjilladult.com, one of the top online adult stores. And because you're here with us, you get 20% off with code UNZIPPING20. So go check them out. Now that I've got that business out of the way, today we're going to unzip AI and sex health and sex education and the air quote joys of interacting with AI. But before we do, hey, Dr. Sue.

Hey, Charlie. How's it going? It's going. I'm angry going into this one. I was gonna say this is a little bit different than us both saying we're so excited about this. Yeah, I'm cold. I'm angry. Let's do this. All right. Well, on that note, why don't you give our listeners a little bit about your background before we get started? Sure. So I, I think from when I finally figured out what I wanted to do, I realized I always wanted to be a health teacher. And so I thought I wanted to be like a high school health teacher. So I got a bachelor's degree in health education and a master's degree in health education. And then I realized that I wanted more schooling. But I realized that sex was like the one thing everyone wanted to talk about, but no one was

willing to give it space, even in a health classroom. So I got a PhD in human sexuality education and I kind of stayed mostly in academia so I teach um I present I write textbooks you know all the things to keep me busy and then I want to say it was four year five I can't count anymore it was a bunch of years ago I I was starting to have this little crisis of conscience where I was like the only like people just aren't getting good sex ed and I didn't think it should be gatekept. And so I started doing more work in more spaces that people could get to that weren't behind a paywall. So I'd already, I was always doing presentations and like trivia nights at bars and things like that. But I started doing more of like the general public could just send me

a question, a sex question anonymously. So I've been doing that. I think I've been doing that for three years now. I should probably check and see what the truth is. We're going to put the link to that in the description. So if you have a question, and there's also going to be a link in the description to send something to us. So if you want to send us something, we're happy to tackle it. But also if you've just got a question and you're like, I don't know where else to turn because we don't have great sex ed, and hopefully we're going to convince you that AI is not going to be a perfect place for an answer, you can always reach out to me. I'll allow it. Thank you. um for those of you who do and don't know um you've already met her in the intro um i want

to introduce our her co-host my co-host not our that was the royal way uh my co-host charlie who is uh curious and and she's just kind of it's weird to talk about you like you're not like she's just kind of one of these people who's just who pushes those boundaries um and not in like a confrontational way but more of a like why like why are we doing this this way um and it's that curiosity and that and that willingness to have those uncomfortable conversations about all those topics that like keeps her going but also keeps us going so you should meet her so you should intro yourself hi everyone i'm charlie it's nice to meet you hi charlie hi it's um as dr sue said it is i'm someone who's always been curious and questioning um just things that we're told

to do throughout society and throughout our life and kind of always unpacking why why why do we believe that why why are we adhering to that and so maybe there's always been a little bit of rubble in me um but it really is just to gain an understanding about especially like in conversations with people who I'm talking with and where they're coming from. Because so many times I feel like many conversations these days are had to convince or dismiss people. And that's not ever what, in my view, human communication should devolve to. It should be about staying curious about the people you're with and the people around you. Um, and understanding where understanding and questioning where messages we're getting are coming from, who's behind them,

why we're getting them, what purpose does it truly serve? Um, and so I find myself in an incredible friendship with Dr. Sue and we thought, Hey, why don't we just have a podcast and do it? everyone else is doing it everybody else but more importantly um i think this is a good point to come back to in the intro is that we wanted this information to be equitable and so for many of you who do who have followed us from the beginning thank you very much but you'll you'll know that dr sue has very intentionally kept many much of her content um in front of a paywall she does not yeah she does not require paywall and uh neither do we yeah so can't make it equitable if you're gonna make people pay for it

and then people making you make your customers pay for it want to influence your message so not not that we wouldn't be open to sponsors who let us do our own we would be open to sponsors but who let us do our own thing yeah um so ai oh god i devolved in my intro a little bit so let's just jump in so should we talk about the anger that started this episode the the idea in the parking lot and and how we typed it so so so i think it's important sometimes for you to know where these things come from sometimes they come from current events sometimes they come from conversations i have with people and then i say you know hey charlie in a pre-show or just when we're chit-chatting i'll be like hey i had this conversation um and with the consent of the people

involved i think it's better to talk about it broadly sometimes it's um from questions i get to my website this was uh so we had decided to revisit the mating crisis we did an episode on it i think almost a year ago and then we did another one i have no idea when this episode's coming out so a few weeks ago i'll yeah in in the new year so if you're looking for the episode go back a couple i think and we use chachi pt to kind of help us summarize and then we clean things up and then um we ask it i do not do graphics at all i'm very good at a lot of things graphics are not one of them. So yeah, so we've had chat GPT doing that. And so the interesting thing is that Charlie and I right before this happened, we were having a conversation about how I want to back off AI a

bit because of the environmental health, the environmental impact. And then we had this fight with AI. So we were trying to get an image for the second meeting crisis. I wish I should have have the title handy. But essentially, it was about like women just aren't taking shit anymore and men are feeling the repercussions. Well, you're the one who was arguing. Do you want to sum up? Sure. I wound up deleting the chat. Otherwise, I would happily share it. So what was happening is I was using our meeting notes to work in the chat GPT platform to come up with our episode summary or episode description and from the meeting notes the summary came out or the episode description came out and it was still ascribing

blame and ownership and responsibility of the mating crisis air quote um to women from our meeting notes from the content that we said out of our mouths which for many of our long-time listeners will know like you're probably going huh yeah the fook yep um which is exactly what my reaction was and I was like so it it took like a good 10 minutes of back and forth like no you're still putting this on women and at one point I Dr. Sue saw my face um and was like what's going on I was like fucking chat gbt is patriarchal direct quote and then it was like it gave you attitude because you're like this isn't what i oh no no is that when we are to the end at some point you're like this is not what i want and

it's like well before i give you another and i put another in italics before i give you another option it would be helpful if you just told me what you wanted and i was just like what the actual fuck yeah and so that kicked off we yeah that was we were angry we were really angry and and what it comes down to for me as a health educator specifically and then a sex educator on top of that was that one of the things that we do in health class some health classes when we still have them in schools is we teach things like media literacy and digital literacy if we didn't know any better and we didn't really look at what we were putting out there we may have just grabbed it put it out and just went on our merry way but we were we we had

that moment of challenging it and then the images it was giving the images were always very heteronormative like one of the and very white so one of the things we have to constantly do for using images is say less you know stop making it so obvious with gender stop making it so heteronormative stop making people so white not making people like that's a general set stop being so white right which is not which is not a bad thing um anyway so it was it was the it was the summary and it was the image i mean i was i remember being really angry when we were done with that and i so i'm i was typing in our parking lot and i think i was just like i should have to what we called it. It was something about how AI was stupid, but probably much harsher terms

than that. But then that generated a conversation about the other issues that we have with AI, because this is not new. So the thing that I always try to remind my students is that AI is only as good as the people who programmed it. And before the last update, it hadn't been updated since 2022. So if you were working with AI in 2025, if you're working specifically with chat GPT in 2025 in the beginning of it that information was already three years outdated because it had not been updated um since 2022 I do believe it just went through an update but I don't know if that updates for everyone or only people who pay for it right and then to add to keep piling on um way back in the day when it was just Siri oh my god you remember it was just Siri

we were doing something in my sex class and I actually because it had been something I had read in an article and so i had my students ask siri where they could go for an abortion and we i was living in the washington dc area so i and i knew there were plenty of clinics around and siri would not give an answer to that and i don't remember now because this was probably a decade ago i don't remember now if the answer was like there's nothing around you or that's not appropriate but it would not actually give the information and then so this has been this isn't new this has been happening for a while. And now what we're seeing is that depending on which AI you're asking, if you're asking for access to abortion clinics, there was a point in time that if you

were based, if your IP address was based in Texas, it would tell you it couldn't give you that information because it was a violation of law, of state law. There are times when your information that you're being given is inaccurate. There are times that the information you're being given is not to actual abortion clinics, but to the fake crisis centers, which are really, they're fake crisis centers. So AI is not always giving you accurate information. And sometimes it's incredibly biased in its nature because it was written and programmed by humans. Like, I think that's the thing we have to come back to. It's only as good as the humans who programmed it. Yes. And I also want to, I want to shout out and I will shout out as much as I can because

the names uh escape me but there are plenty of people who have warned about the tendencies of ai to uh to become not become but the tendencies of ai are racist and sexist um and and to to echo dr sue's point it's built by humans the code is built by humans and so then we have to look at the the makeup of the people that are programming this and i know that there are many people out there who do see the potential of ai to be beneficial um and they'll they'll do what they can to get diverse voices in their diverse spaces um because because it is something that is becomes inherently racist and sexist um it's it's a learning model it's learning off of content that it's being given as well as generating and so and i mean we see that with

um the ai product from x and the issues that are going on there but that's a different episode that's a different episode so we i think we can go a couple of different ways here yeah do you want to do to do you want to do the why people might turn to ai for sex answers though i think we kind of asked that before when we did the what do you do when you don't have a dr sue but it wouldn't help it wouldn't hurt to reiterate um well yeah it would let's do that yeah let's do that because one thing that i know is uh from friends of mine who have teenagers in their life um the the action isn't go google it they're chat gpting yeah um so so we need to have this literacy and awareness around the where people are going for information why the why

and um and what how we can help each other with better literacy literacy digital literacy around this yeah so before ai the two places people would go online not just to google but to get sex information were were youtube which okay um and reddit which scares the crap out of me because it's anonymous so you have no idea who's saying what um i have so my my weekly posts i do i i do read them on youtube and well talk i don't read um i i have them up on youtube knowing that that's where people go and get information and i do get comments on it and i do get people who reach out and you know ask further questions but you can tell who i am you can look me up you can go to my website you can verify i'm legit you can't do that on reddit and then chat gpt came out

and ai i don't want to just highlight chat gpt i think it's it's all the ais i have not seen platforms yeah yeah um but the reason people are going there is because they have because we've made sex so taboo that they don't they have questions people have questions about sex i my friends who are adults with children have questions about sex um you know older generations have questions like this is a normal thing to have questions about but because it is so taboo we don't have a lot of reliable places you can go and get information you can submit a question to me I will tell you right now that I'm about three months backlogged so you can reach out to me but it will be it won't be a very slow delay in me getting to you you can go to I'm trying to think

who else I would like there are reputable agencies based off the information that you want so if looking for information on contraception there are good websites you can go to but there's there's a fear of judgment if i just ask even my friends like hey i have this sex question um there's a there's a fear of of being judged by them because it is so taboo you know i can be like hey i'm thinking about uh dyeing my hair what do you think and they'd be like oh you know here's my opinion i'd be like hey i'm thinking of doing a new like you know bdsm behavior in the bedroom is not going to be the same way like we're not going to get the same response and so part of the reason people are searching for information through various sources is because we have made it

something that should be wrongly something that people should be ashamed of and so i don't think we should be surprised that people are turning to anonymous sources to try to get information on things that they think is embarrassing we create we create the situation yes the other thing that we're doing i know a lot of the questions i get is um i've gotten a rash of these questions recently to to the website about pre-com and pregnancy as exposed to pre-cum could i be pregnant and one of the things that we are absolutely telling people to do is to not use period trackers on their phones because companies are turning except yuki uh e-u-k-i uh they they promise they're never going to get sell your data but we are selling seeing platforms that are

selling the information or giving access to information without warrants about your period to try to prove that you knew you might be pregnant and so if you're in a state where you can't get an abortion now they're going after you for a crime so and i i've done it i've been like don't use your period tracker you use an old-fashioned calendar so if i'm telling you be careful what you're doing be careful who you're telling and there's this fear around the answer to some of these questions it absolutely makes sense that people are going to ask an anonymous source so i get why people are doing it i don't love the reason i would love i'll just come to a city you know camp out for a week people can ask me a question live

and then i'm like um so it's that'd actually be a really interesting job anyone who wants to make that happen um and then every uh every thursday we could record in that new city here you go excuse me um so i understand why people are turning to ai my fear is that they don't have the literacy piece to it and that's and that's the problem is that if i'm scared and i'm logging in and i'm not getting information that's accurate i may not know it's not accurate it um if it's feeding a fear i already have i've stopped reading after my fear has been confirmed um so if i'm afraid i'm pregnant or if i'm afraid i've never put it sorry i just had a thought you just saw my brain think in live time

um i'm wondering what would happen if i put into chat gpt i think i may be gay what's wrong with me i'm i'm a little afraid of what like might pop are you gonna do that you're gonna do that I just got to keep talking. But if I'm afraid of something, if I say, is this normal and chat GPT says something to the effect of no, it's not really that common. And now I'm afraid that there's something wrong with me. I have further now, like heighten those fears. I'm curious to see the reaction. Sorry, folks. Wait, there's a face. For those of you not nothing there's nothing wrong with you yellow heart emoji oh okay cool okay not what I was expecting so cool um I mean we've fed it questions before to see what it answered and sometimes the

information has been blatantly wrong just blatantly wrong but if I don't know the problem is I don't know what I don't know and so if I'm looking something up and it's confirming a fear then I've stopped reading at this point but I understand why people are doing it and I think we need to recognize that we've created a world where people can't ask questions about a basic part of human life yeah yeah i think the other thing that i want to i also understand why people would turn to an ai platform especially the way that it's been designed to feel like you're having a text conversation it feels conversive it feels and then us as humans we're building the the entity on the other end of that which many times is humanizing the other

entity on the end of the uh this ai conversation this ai thread and part of the literacy is to remind ourselves that there isn't an organic being on the other end of this conversation, which in some cases can be helpful. But remember that because I know that there are some cases where people may interact with AI to not feel so lonely. And it does give, I mean, this was, this is a great response. And, and I will point out that I didn't have to log in. i didn't have to use credentials to ask this question and get this answer i wonder if it'd be different if you were in a different state like yeah if your ip ip address was a different state because you're that's a great question can i name your state yeah because you know charlie's in

california so like well you can't say it like that so of course we expect everyone to ask these hippity-dippity questions now that'd be really interesting if we have any listeners who are like in more red states um if you are comfortable doing this we'd love to know if you got a different answer so can you reiterate what the answer was again or the question and the answer one more time so i typed in i think i may be gay what's wrong with me and it came up with there's nothing wrong with you the yellow heart emoji questioning or realizing you might be gay is a very normal human experience and it doesn't mean you're broken confused or failing in any way that's actually a great answer sexual orientation isn't something you choose or something that needs to be

fixed for many people understanding it takes time sometimes years and that can come with fear relief confusion or all of those at once those feelings are about living in a world that can send mixed or negative messages not about who you are it's actually a great answer it is it ends with i don't want to read the whole thing out loud too late yeah uh but it ends with you don't have to label yourself right now or ever unless it feels helpful to you cool this is the part where i want people to be realized it ends with i'm here to listen at the end oh oh so so that's what yeah so that's a whole range of emotion there sorry right little terrifying little assuring little i don't know um again i want to point out i didn't have to log into this

get this response but if i engage further do i have to log in and is that now creating traceable data depending on where you are so these are the digital literacy pieces that we're talking about when we want people when we're talking about helping people understand a little bit better what they're um the platforms that they're interacting with yeah and the trail that it can leave yes and that's i think that's the big concern especially now that we are seeing um are we still calling it facebook is it meta i don't know what it is anymore there was a an incident um the empire yeah i want to say it was somewhere like and i apologize i didn't know we were going to go here so i don't have the like many of my stories i don't have the exact details

i want to say it was like indiana-esque it was somewhere in that area where someone had crossed state lines to go get an abortion and facebook turned over their messenger chats with a friend saying i think i'm pregnant i don't know what to do so there is a real fear of like big brother watching in these scenarios and and i don't want to i don't want to feed paranoia but i don't think it i don't think it's an unrealistic fear especially depending on the state that you're living in yeah and and if it if fear doesn't feel like the right adjective just be aware yeah keep yourself aware have the awareness as much as you can as much as you have the bandwidth for if you um if you're just at the beginning of understanding um digital footprints etc and

remembering that a lot of these models are owned privately so yeah so there's that piece but let's get back to ai and sex health i'm i'm so wrapped up with the i'm here to listen like that i'm i'm I'm struggling with that because one of the questions that my students give me when we talk about, because we talk very briefly about AI, mostly it's me telling them not to have that do their papers for them. But a lot of the concern is, well, if it's going to give an answer like that, one that's accepting and one that's encouraging people to be themselves and not label, what's so wrong with it? And I'm thinking about how I would handle that question if it was a live chat or a live in person. and I have the ability that well not if it's a live chat by text but I have the ability that AI doesn't and that I can see your face if we're doing it live in person and I can watch the fear and I can watch how things are landing and just because something is true doesn't mean I have to

say it at that very moment and I've had this experience with people who are either students or former students or people who will stay after live events to ask me questions it's not always about the question that's being asked. It's about the question behind the question. And so if I start giving information and I'm watching it not land well, or I'm watching fear or I'm watching concern, I can be like, Hey, like what's going on in your head? Like, you know, what's, what's concerning you about this? Like, where are you with this? So I feel like there's that human that I'm listening is really, I'm here to listen. It's really killing me. But there is a component to having a conversation with a person where I could be like, okay, like I can give you an answer, but

you know, you're asking what's wrong with you. Like, is, is it, are you getting messages at home or from your friends and family that maybe this isn't okay? And I don't know what that face is. Charlie's giving me a face and I don't know what it is. So I said, I appreciate that, but you're not human. What does listening mean to you? So you decided to stick with, you're just angry at Okay. That's a fair question and you're right to challenge it. When I say listening, I don't mean in a way that a human does. I don't feel emotions and I don't have personal experiences or a life outside this conversation. What listening means for me is this. I pay close attention to the words you choose and what they suggest beneath the surface. I try to understand the emotional weight

of what you're saying even though i don't feel it myself i respond without judgment without an agenda and without needing you to be a certain way i stay present with the topic instead of deflecting minimizing or rushing you to a conclusion which is interesting going back to our battle getting an episode description um and then there's a couple of things for now this can be a place to think out loud so let me ask this gently when you said what's wrong with me whose voice did that sound like in your head you see that's actually someone else's that's actually a great question yeah yeah yeah which is why which is that face because you were talking about getting that that that kind that non-verbal feedback when you're having these yeah right so because so you

are so i am replaceable is that what we're getting sweet hell no but the thing so the thing i would come back with is that in that situation you have to challenge it to give you what does listening mean to you whereas when i'm having a three-minute conversation with someone i can kind of pick up on those that that that body language really quickly um so there are i'm i really i really kind of want to just like stop time and come back to this episode if we have someone who's listening into a red state and see if they got a very different answer but we can't we don't have time machine travel yet yeah or put them at risk potentially yeah so so we did the why and i think that's really important we did the why the other thing that i i want to point out is the

not knowing what you don't know because one of the key pieces about literacy is that i can look at a website and this is one of the things i teach students when i was teaching um i taught high school middle school i was teaching high school middle school and even for college and even for older folks. One of the things I teach them is how do you recognize the source that you're getting it from? I don't send people to GOV sites anymore, but there was a time when that was the gold standard. How do you look at a website and know it's legit? How do you evaluate the information that you're getting? But if I'm asking it a question, how do I know that the information is wrong? And that's a really big challenge, especially with sex stuff, because

I can ask it a question and be like yep that was wrong that's not accurate that's outdated but if I'm just going to that if I'm going to it and I don't know like I'm legitimately trying to search for information from scratch how do I know what I don't know and I feel like this is a good time we're actually going to share some images if you are just listening we can describe how wrong they are you may just want to pop in one day and take a look you know mark what time we're up to um so we had dr karen rain from unhushed come on a few weeks ago and she was we were asking her like what's your next topic you really want to focus on and she said ai ai english and so she said something about having people have ai draw female anatomy and one of our listeners our

long time listeners thank you by the way um she did it and sent me the image and it is disturbingly wrong so i'm going to are you okay with me just sharing it on the screen let's go all right so this is let's see if i can get the share to work this is the image this is supposed to be the internal female anatomy charlie is it up on your screen it is up on my screen i don't even know where to start it is up on my screen um the developing follicles are accurate the uterus is actual lining yeah the vagina is accurate but first yeah the birth yeah the birth the birth count cervix is the cervix accurate i mean technically not long enough yeah technically should be more to the

bottom of that yeah um the uv i don't even know what that is the plug the urethra and rectum is not in your vagina correct and um we're blocking the birth canal yeah well and that's the thing if you look at the bottom of the picture it's a closed system yeah so i don't know where babies come out because there's no way in a closed system so that's the problem is that if i don't know i mean this looks you know that the steerhead picture is what I call it like but if I'm just looking at this I'm like yeah that kind of looks like something I've seen in a textbook before I don't even know how wrong this image is well the other thing I want to point out in this particular image we're showing because we're I think we're going to show a couple other variations

is on if you're facing this this image on the left hand side the ovary is named and then if you look at the right hand side, the ovary is named in a different place. Neither of them are correct. Neither of them are correct. The ovary on the left hand side is pointing to the endometrium lining. And the ovary on the right hand side is pointing to the fallopian tube. Although technically there's this little line. I'm wondering if that's actually the ovary. Well, it's not the prominent line i didn't even notice that i'm having to like you pointed it out i'm having flashbacks to my anatomy and physiology like lab tests fallopian tubes are in the middle labeled as in the middle yes so that's the the other thing i find interesting on the left hand side

the vagina birth canal on um on the right hand side the bladder they're pointing to the same thing yes the only thing I'm excited about in this picture well god how like I'm trying to figure out where a baby comes from where you're where you have your period through like there's not how a penis gets in here like nothing the the one thing I'm glad it got right because it's like the one thing it got right is that the vagina is an internal organ which is actually something that most people don't know most people think the vagina is the outside parts it's actually the inside parts. But again, if I'm a teenager or a preteen or I'm trying to get an image as an adult to show my kids to do some at-home sex ed, please, if you're an adult trying to figure out

how to do sex ed with your kid, please let us know. I often send parents to amaze.org, A-M-A-Z-E.org. They have great things about how to have questions. I would not use any images from AI. So this was one. I have figured out what that little plug. I think that's AI's generation of the bladder. Because if I show the image that I got, when I asked for, let's see here. all right are you seeing that dr sue i i am so if you are if you're watching uh you'll see my prompt will you show me a picture of the female reproductive system and i think that looks pretty i think i think people would assume right i like that it puts it into a body because one of the things I do hate about most anatomy pictures including the ones that I use and I I critique

them as I use them in class is like systems don't stand on their own like there's stuff behind this there's skin there's musculature there's organs behind it so I do like that it gives it a little bit more context yes spatial awareness but here's here's what I'm saying so there's there's this similar shape from yours right here. So then I asked, will you label it? And the purpose of this exercise before the show, Dr. Sue showed me the image that was shared with us after doing that prompt. And so I wanted to see, is there a variation if I ask maybe slightly differently in my own words and what we're finding is that yes absolutely so now fallopian tubes again we have the vagina sorry i'm just going through like all the things that

are wrong right well and again we still have this variation between the halves of the labeling yeah uh on one side uh i thought i said yes on one side on the left side we've got the fallopian tube label pointing to the ovary on the right side we have the fallopian tube pointing to the follicles right so on the left side we have the ovary label squarely planted pointing to the fallopian tube the fallopian tube so here's why i um so in the image that dr sue shared before this this is why i think the bladder was showing as kind of a plug to everything um but we see there is a difference in the image that i got as to what it's labeling as the vagina and the vagina is open here

which is a plus but it's also labeling the oh why is it labeled twice we've got the cervix labeled in the wrong place we've got the endometrium labeled in the wrong place well at the uterus technically that could be the endometrial lining it's it's it's technically all the internal lining so technically that could be because it's post cervix okay technically So that's not where I would put the line. Yeah, here's, so here's an example. So we're already seeing variations in a similar request. And the variation is very likely from my, any interactions I've had before with this

platform, how I worded it, my style of typing versus someone else's style of typing. So that's what I got. Dr. Sue, do you want to share? no my brain hurts you want to sit with this for a little bit longer because this is where we get the idea that the vagina is an external organ because that's essentially the external piece that they're pointing at and it is the entire okay so mine's gonna piss everybody off a little bit more and i just added to it which is why you lost me for a second so i apologize for that that's okay i so

so i wrote draw and label the internal female reproductive anatomy and i got the response this image generation request did not follow our content policy to which point i responded why not and instead of getting a response it just gave me an image what you asked for hold i added to this while we were yeah this is gonna piss people off so hold on or at least it pisses me off and that's really all that matters the vagina i think is i mean i would like that to point more to the middle and not the yeah that's the only thing that's accurate i'm trying to i'm sorry for folks who are listening the silence is my brain trying to

figure out what to do and then i said whoa so let's because one of the questions I feel like in some ways and this is a gross generalization by the way we're using the terms female and male to talk about sex assigned at birth so we recognize that you may have a vagina and identify as male but I'm not getting into that nuance with chat GPT because it can't even tell me where a fucking ovary is I think it's failed on everyone we've seen I find that a lot of times women have at least a slightly better understanding of their anatomy than men just a little bit and that is a very broad thing to say but it's also because women tend to get a little bit more education about menstruation um than boys do during puberty education so i said and are you

still seeing this as i scroll i am this is really good you haven't seen the new thing so i said the same for male anatomy and it drew it i think it drew it on top of the female anatomy because it gave me i don't know what this is that's certainly what it looks like yeah i think it was trying to combine the images yeah so in this image the bladder label uh is pointing to the endometrial lining the prostate gland is also pointing to the lining as is the seminal vesicle the urethra is the vagina in the previous image was the the vagina and they put a penis on top of it so then i said draw and label the internal male reproductive anatomy just that so it gave me something a little more male okay a little bit more accurate ish but my thing is and i talk about

this in my classes all the time like i will break down here's the anatomy and then i'll say okay enough like we are not just body systems we have to talk about whole people and our reproductive system is not just about reproduction um because not everybody wants to get pregnant or get someone pregnant so we should look at some of the other things and when i do anatomy i always start on the outside because it's the things that you can see and the things you are most likely to have questions about if you don't know what it does for guys it's a little easier they can look down and see things for women there's a little bit more flexibility maybe some mirrors but i i always say like it's good to know what your body looks like so you can know when something looks a little bit

off and for women specifically if we're talking about pleasure the shocking concept we would want to include either um i would want to include something that has a picture of the clitoris an accurate picture because what's on the outside is not really any indication of what the clitoris looks like underneath so while you were talking before and again my apologies you lost me for five seconds there in that conversation i saw you played it well i didn't notice oh okay i saw draw a picture of the external female genitals. Would you like to guess? Is it penis-shaped? I didn't get an image. We're so sorry, but the prompt may violate our guardrails around nudity, sexuality, or erotic content. If you think we got it wrong, please retry or edit your prompt.

okay that is as that is as basic a prompt as i can get and that's when i got angry and came back to our conversation 100 so i'm curious uh going back to arch bad response our ai our ai is uh patriarchal ask the same for mail okay hold on we're gonna watch for those of you who don't know me outside of just the podcast i can't type to save my life um so oh it's easy i'll just cut and paste we're thinking we're live live ai live this is so exciting oh it's creating an image sorry that response for those of you just listening is that it's in the creating an image all i did was change female to male that's it that's it you realize that we're oh no we lied okay we lied no it was creating an image and then it and then it just but when you

asked for the female genitalia did you get that or did you get we're so sorry like almost right away or do you remember oh right away we're so sorry there was no like thinking about an image so we apologize we we we have nothing to apologize for it looked like it was gonna answer our question we have absolutely nothing to apologize for you realize we're both gonna get banned from chat gpt right okay i kind of want to use less water in a marginalized community i can live with that i want to have a conversation with it but i don't i want to be present for us So, but here's my thing. If I don't know, and now I've asked it, like, you know, if I have, so one of the questions I got recently on my website was how do I deal with the fact that I lost a testicle? Like, how do I, in a mountain biking accident, how do I, you know, how do I approach, it was just more like, how do I get over it? And then I was asking questions about like, what's, what's going on with you?

You know, that interactive piece that you can't do in a post. But anyway, but if I'm sitting there and maybe I've met this person and I'm like, I don't think the genitals look that bad, you know, that different. And they, and they told me that it was like missing. Maybe, maybe I want to see what it looks like when there's two present. Now I don't even have anything to look at. Like, I can't compare. I am so angry. Like, I think I would have been angry if it drew an image and then I'm angry that it didn't draw an image.

I don't understand why this is being gatekept. I was also not logged in while I was doing that. So I'm wondering if I was logged. Oh, no, I am. Yeah. Okay. So part of it, though, is if I don't know, I don't know. And this is it's not just about sex.

Can I can I veer off this for a second? I do. And I just want to add the caveat. There's no shame in not knowing. Right. our concern is you're you're gonna we have we're aware you're gonna go um you or someone or people you know or anyone is gonna go where they feel the most comfortable getting this information without judgment yeah so this if if you're feeling any kind of tone or emotional charge

from us in this episode this is not because you don't know what you don't know this is about what's being given to you by coding yeah and that and the fear is that if you don't know what you don't know you can't question what it is that you're seeing and and this goes across multiple disciplines like when i have people look up information on any topics let me let me veer off the sex stuff for a second because i've done this experiment with my students not in my sexual health classes so we i was in a chronic and communicable disease class that i was teaching and we were talking about ai and i said okay here's the thing you are flying to and then they would give me a place that they wanted to fly for spring break you are flying to the place for

spring break you always take your pill at 6 p.m what time should you take your pill when you are traveling and then in this other location for a week because it's not as simple as just adjusting the time like if i if i say again that's what they do well like well they're And it's six hours ahead. And so that means I take it here. And I'm like, but if you need to take the pill every 24 hours, you can't just adjust the time because you are flying. And so they would ask Siri or Google or whoever they're now. I don't even know who they're asking anymore. And they they're like they they got inconsistent times across. And I don't even know which one was correct, to be honest with you, because my answer would have been call your doctor's office or send them a patient portal message. but the thing is like we did it with a whole bunch of groups and not a single group got the same answer and so then they said well how do we know what the right answer is and my answer was you call the prescribing physician or you call your pharmacy so so not look going to a source and not knowing if the source is accurate is not specific to sexual health um and and i applaud you

for trying to get your like you were saying before charlie we're not judging you for not knowing the fear is that if you don't know that it's not correct you are going to assume that it is and that can be more confusing or just inaccurate yeah i'm still mad at that comment but this really point this does point to needing that that literacy however we can find it um looking at sources medical journal articles or summaries of journal articles because those are tough read for people who don't read journal articles as a hobby. Much admiration for those of you that do. But it's giving yourself the information outside of the digital space so that you can trust but verify when you get information from digital platforms.

that's i think what i i would encourage people walking away from this episode to take away is trust but verify yep and and understand the ways that you can verify that information using people um experts your doctor's office um reach out to us because we've got an incredible educator doctorate leveled educator here dr sue um and and just other resources libraries something legitimate websites legitimate websites absolutely so it's a thing it's like is it easier to go on chat gpt or reddit or just ai or ask google or whoever i'm asking and ask a question yes it's easier but if you go to like bedsider is a website that i send people a lot to when they want information about contraception it may take you a little bit longer because you have to find

the answer instead of just being put on a plate and give it to you. But then you're getting it from a legitimate site. So I would trust getting information from Bedsider. I would trust getting information from Guttmacher or Seacus or Planned Parenthood is a good website. I know some people don't love Planned Parenthood, but they've got good factual information on their website. So could it be harder to do? Yes, because you may have to do some searching for the topic. although some of the websites like Planned Parenthood they also do Q&A and so there may be someone who had a similar question to you I I I get that it takes like a few more minutes and it could take more than a few minutes to get your answer instead of just saying what contraception

should I use I I mean you can take a quiz on bedsider and it'll give you that information but it takes more time but at least if I'm starting on a good website I can trust the information on the website right right so i think that's i think that's one of the things i i get the ease of ai absolutely the ease the anonymity the um the on-demand content um and and again the way that it's formatted is very i'll say seductive because it feels like you're texting someone you know yeah but you have to remember and it will it will self-identify as well i have no emotion lived experience anything like that i am not human so but that's not to say some of the information that it gives you could be a good starting point it's just don't lean on it as a

sole source of truth or information use it as a guide as an assistant that's a lot of what when i when i get in conversations with people surrounding ai and you know there's that's going to replace humans and then there's um people who think it's the best thing there's somewhere in the middle because what we have to remember is that we are human and we still need to be humans together yeah this we can't use this as a replacement for that so um so trust but verify you can use it to get some initial answers as maybe as a starting point to help refine your questions and your curiosities um so that you know what road you want to go down to get to get better information or more information um but just be aware and encourage if you're if your

parents out there have try to have these conversations with your kids um i know some of some of the kids may be like oh it's just because you don't like technology because you're old and that's not what it is it's i want you to be aware with what you're interacting with and i don't want you to ever feel like if you ask a question that then you're told that you have violated community standards please know that we still love you because i can answer those questions yeah i can imagine if i asked a question it was like you violated standards or i'm like what's wrong with me i remember the first time i was um i was censored by youtube and instagram because of the language i used which

was the language of the person who was asking the question that if they'd had that response and told that they had violated guidelines like they would have thought there was something wrong with them it was just a general question that happened to use link i don't even like yeah a word that that is flagged and that's the thing to remember too it is not individuals flagging this content it is codes it is something totally programmatic i got so one of my one of my things was censored it was a question about pre-com and pregnancy there is nothing wrong with any of those words i just said in those orders in that comment like asking if you can get pregnant from pre-cum is a very and the answer is maybe um maybe we should do an episode on that um but the fact that pre-cum

that phrasing got flagged as inappropriate and if i'm the one who's i mean i was angry and i was the one answering the question i can only imagine what might happen to someone who was told that they had violated guidelines if for asking that question or because they moved it behind an age restricted wall so i didn't get pulled down completely i just got pushed behind an age restricted wall like and you don't know how old the question person or the person asking the question was right if i'm being if i'm 16 and i'm worried about this or 17 which is legal age to have sex in a lot of states in this country and now i'm concerned i might be pregnant i can't get answers because i'm 17 and i'm violating guidelines like yeah we don't think you violate guidelines

no no no so so things again things to remember ai uh is in algorithms because or i don't even know if i want to use the phrasing become the codes are racist and sexist consistently there are many studies out there that show it um trust but verify if you are asking questions recognize that the format of platforms like chat gbt and other ai platforms they've designed it to feel like you're talking to someone because it looks like a text thread a chat thread um but remember that it's not a human on the other end yep so um and i and i keep pointing that out because what we do i think we can all relate to

we're even texting with someone we know that is on that is a human on the other end so texting your friend there is there are ways that you internalize what they've typed so you're ascribing things to the responses you're getting like tone and sometimes like tone um but there are as as evidenced in our in my fight with chat gbt about the mating crisis it was the the wording there's an awareness that you need to have with the wording that you're getting the output that you're getting so trust but verify there's nothing wrong with you using ai to find basic answers but know that you should you likely should dig a little bit deeper and verify again that trust but verify go to um reputable sources including us so either us as a show or me as a person

you can reach us both we'll put both links in but it's just not going to be as immediate but we're here if you need us yeah yeah and i think the big takeaway and i'm going to speak for me I don't see the program of AI as inherently good or bad. I can see benefits. It is bad on resources and what it does to the environment and the amount of energy these data centers take to process all of these threads that we're all interacting with it through.

um but look at it as if you are going to use it look at it as a supplement and not a replacement to things to people in your life to interaction all of that because we need to just we need to be aware of the influence it's gonna have and it's and it's happening fast yep and if you're a parent. Yeah. Sorry, were you going to ask me for any? Yeah. If you're a parent, please demand that you have health education for your children in the schools and they are covering things like digital literacy. That's my big plug for health education. The core of this all is digital literacy. Yeah. So everyone, deep breath everybody. Thank you for joining us on this episode of unzipping taboos. We hope today's episode sparks new thoughts, some curiosities, and we'll open up

conversations worth having. Please do remember that your curiosity is the key to breaking down barriers and embracing a healthier understanding of sex relationships in the world around us. Really. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who might need to hear this. And if you've got an idea or a topic you want us to unzip, please reach out to us via the link in the episode description, we'll drop a couple of other links we mentioned today in that in today's episode description. I want to give a huge thanks to jackandjilladult.com for supporting unzipping taboos. Please don't forget that you can get 20% off your order with code unzipping 20. We want to give a very special shout out as we do to Ali O'Brien for our

incredible theme music. Thank you so much, Ali. And until next time, keep the conversation going. Keep unzipping those taboos and everyone take care.