Seeing a naked body on a screen no longer necessarily means looking at a real person. A Czech team has just compared different nude images feminine, real or artificial, and their results are surprising: the bodies created by
artificial intelligence compete head-on with photos of real women.
This work, published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behaviorare part of a landscape where online pornography, beauty filters and 3D avatars have gradually changed what we consider to be a “beautiful” body. Researchers wondered how adults attracted to women react to these new, highly crafted visuals. And the hierarchy that emerges does not necessarily go in the expected direction.
An experiment on six types of nude images, from photos to hentai
The authors recruited 649 Czech adults, all sexually attracted to women, mostly men, aged 18 to 91. Each participant saw 30 images of naked women, presented frontally on a gray background. Six categories were in competition:
real photosAI-generated images, 3D figures (CGI), women with visible surgery, silicone sex dolls and drawings hentai.
For each image, volunteers were asked to rate the realism, sexual attractiveness, aesthetic beauty (all on a scale of 0 to 100), and whether or not the emotion they felt was pleasant. This last dimension was measured using small drawn characters, supposed to go from “unhappy, annoyed, dissatisfied, melancholic, hopeless or bored” has “happy, content, satisfied, hopeful or relaxed“, describe Ellen Zakreski, senior researcher and scientist at the Czech National Institute of Mental Health and Charles University.
AI nudes deemed more attractive than photos, but less “real”
When the researchers analyzed the notes, a first observation emerged: photos of real women remain those perceived as the most realistic. AI-generated images come in just behind on this criterion. But for sexual appeal, aesthetics and the pleasure felt, the order is clearly reversed: AI nudes come first, ahead of photos, then 3D models. Women with surgically exaggerated shapes, dolls and hentai bring up the rear, and are even considered rather unpleasant on average.
Men and women do not have quite the same intensity of reaction: men generally attribute higher scores to all categories, but maintain the same ranking. Age also plays a role. Older participants gave higher ratings to real photos, AI images, and CGI, while younger participants rated hentai designs as more aesthetic, more exciting, and more enjoyable than their elders, likely because they grew up with manga and anime aesthetics.
“Idealized” bodies and important limits to keep in mind
The authors mention a possible effect of hyper-idealization: an AI system makes it possible to control every detail of the body, to erase wrinkles, folds or asymmetries, and to offer very smooth proportions, already familiar to those accustomed to filters and online retouching. On a screen, these fictional bodies may therefore be judged more comfortable to look at, without this implying that people prefer virtual partners in real life.
The study remains cautious: the sample is not representative of the entire population (Czech participants, often already involved in research on sexuality), all the figures have light skin, and only naked women were presented. Another point: the answers are based solely on declarative statements, without physiological measurement of arousal. Researchers are now calling for testing other types of bodies, of various origins, including males, and to see if this “bonus” granted to bodies generated by AI is found in other countries.