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IRISH MEN ARE beginning to seek help for AI porn “addiction”, according to an expert in the area.
As the ability to access hardcore porn becomes easier, people are seeking out extreme AI material, psychotherapist David Kavanagh told The Journal this week.
The ongoing fallout from Grok’s nudification scandal has sparked worldwide debate on AI-generated sexual imagery – something that has been available albeit in a slightly less mainstream way for years.
Kavanagh, a registered psychotherapist who works with couples and people seeking help for addictions, says new clients are now presenting with obsessions around AI porn.
“AI pornography is becoming a problem now,” he said.
When I’m doing initial assessments I’ll ask if they’re looking at videos, photos, OnlyFans, or AI.
“In the last few months, more and more people are saying AI.”
Kavanagh said that after the initial rush from videos on mainstream porn sites, users may move to platforms such as OnlyFans, where they can request specific material from performers.
When this no longer satisfies them, AI provides another level of control, allowing users to request increasingly unconventional material with seemingly unlimited options, he explained.
“They (addicts) become desensitised to regular stuff,” he said.
“The brain isn’t getting any more dopamine from watching a regular scenario. Dopamine decreases over time when you’re exposed to the same content. They’ll end up watching things they don’t even enjoy – just to access more extreme material, including videos that make them question their sexuality or that they know to be wrong.
“The user’s brain is addicted to dopamine, so they get that extra novelty from AI.”
As part of the development of a toolkit to reduce harmful engagement with AI-generated explicit imagery, researchers at University College Cork found that engagement with non-consensual material is linked to incorrect beliefs that such images are only harmful if viewers believe they are real, or that public figures are legitimate targets for this type of abuse.
Currently, there is no officially recognised diagnostic criteria for ‘porn addiction’. Attempts to include ‘hypersexuality disorder’ in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) were unsuccessful due to a lack of consistent evidence.
However, evidence does exist that excessive consumption of porn can lead to ‘habituation’, pushing people to seek out increasingly extreme material.
The Rutland Centre for addiction in Dublin noted in its 2024 report that 4.5% of all admissions were for sex/porn addiction.
Not all porn is harmful, and some in the field believe it can be used as part of a healthy adult sex life. Studies have found that couples who watch porn together report higher relationship quality. However, studies here in Ireland show that certain types of porn and frequent viewing does have negative effects on young people in particular.
One 2024 HSE study, Use of Pornography by Young Adults in Ireland, found that men who use pornography “have poorer wellbeing than non-users”, are “less satisfied with their lives”, and report “more depressive symptoms and a poorer self-image”.
“This pattern is evident even taking account of levels of wellbeing at 17 years of age.”
The same study found that men and women who use pornography have higher levels of aggression and are more likely to cope with stress by using negative strategies, such as drinking alcohol or drug-taking.
Those seeking help for porn addiction report symptoms including sleep problems, difficulty concentrating at work or in education, negative impacts on relationships and trust issues with partners, according to Kavanagh.
“In my experience, it can cause people to be secretive, demanding, highly sexualised, and then disconnect from their partner in a sexual way,” Kavanagh added.
“Erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation are often side effects of constant porn use, leaving men feeling inadequate with a real human, and then due to this, will decide to not to bother with human partners at all and masturbate instead.”
This can lead to relationship issues. Many of the clients Kavanagh sees are there because their relationship has suffered due to their porn use and they are at risk of losing their partner if they do not remedy the situation.
“Men who come to me have been forced into the process by a partner who has found them watching porn again and again,” he said.
They are reluctant and feel a lot of shame.
“It can be a very hidden addiction, some of them I work with sit awake till 6am watching porn. Men physically hurt themselves, masturbating until they’re in pain.”
The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) finds that use of online pornography is highly gendered, with 64% of young men and just 13% of young women seeking it out.
Key findings include that men from more advantaged backgrounds are more likely to use pornography, and that porn use is lower among those with a religious affiliation and where there is greater parental monitoring of behaviour in adolescence.
Lower levels of regular condom use was also identified among those who use pornography.
A 2024 study, funded by Women’s Aid, found viewing pornography is also associated with a lower willingness to intervene as a bystander in an incident of sexual assault.
Multiple studies demonstrate the extent to which mainstream pornographic content promotes racist attitudes and stereotypes.
The Women’s Aid research notes: “Pornography frequently fetishises Black women, depicting them as animalistic and hypersexual, deserving to be ‘conquered’, especially by white men. Asian women featured in pornography are stereotypically depicted as ‘passive, submissive, or eager to please’, but at the same time are found to suffer from greater aggression during filming than women from other ethnic and racial backgrounds.”
The study also found that exposure to sexual media was related to permissive sexual attitudes, and acceptance of rape myths.
Kavanagh said that for people experiencing hypersexual behaviour driven by dopamine addiction, stopping can be extremely difficult.
Some individuals may be referred to a psychotherapist and prescribed the drug naltrexone, which has been used to reduce compulsive internet use for sexual gratification.
“People who have money will find it easier to be treated than those who are poor, like all addictions,” Kavanagh said.
“Those who attempt to stop completely without therapy or other help will suffer withdrawal, low mood and depressive episodes.
“They’re watching porn because they can’t cope with emotions in life, so once you go cold turkey, then you experience those emotions, you’ll be cranky and agitated, feel sad, frustrated and hurt.”
Some people end up turning to advice threads like Reddit to ask for help.
A review of court reports in recent years by The Journal found that exposure to porn was mentioned repeatedly in cases of sexual assault in recent years.
In December 2025, two court cases highlighted the prevalence of porn use by Irish children.
In one, a boy aged 13 had sexually abused his six-year-old sister and uploaded images of the abuse online. In the second, a teenage boy was detained for the multiple rapes of his then 13-year-old “girlfriend” when he was just 14.
The Irish Examiner reported that in both cases, the boys had access to online pornography from an early age — in one case, as young as six years old.
In 2024, a judge at a sentencing hearing of a 26-year-old man who pleaded guilty to raping his cousin warned that early consumption of pornography led the accused to view his young relative as the “human equivalent of a blow-up sex doll”.
Kavanagh said there has to be a change to the access young people have to smartphones.
“Children are being given smartphones by their parents, and able to see porn at 10, 11 and 12 years old. There will be consequences when they get to 13, for instance, the idea of sending nudes is normalised.
“Parents have a role here, children can’t handle it, the dopamine, the continuous internet use. There are consequences.”
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