Should You Use AI Chatbots For Advice?

There’s quite a lot of chat about young people using Generative AI Chatbots for advice. Here I’m going to explain why they aren’t that great and so we probably shouldn’t use them for advice. But also you knew that already of course. Also, do young people actually want to use them? What do they say they want instead? And how great is BISH?

The good and the bad about Gen AI Chatbots

The kind of Gen AI Chatbots I’m talking about are the ‘large language models’ ones that you might have used yourself. I don’t want to encourage them, so here are some anagrams of some of the famous ones: Iminge, Korg, GatchPt, LeeryPixPt, ClipToo, EekPeesd, AimEat, AuCadLie¹. Chatbots are a way to access information and also advice in a really direct, personal, private(ish), way that is really convenient. They are there whenever you need them and they get back to you within seconds. They are just right there on your devices, even within the apps you use. And they are begging for you to use them. Bosses are telling employees to use them and even teachers are telling kids to use them.

And the bad ….

Some people use them to answer questions about sex and relationships stuff (gender, sexuality, consent, how to have sex, safer sex, bodies, all the stuff I cover here basically). There have been a few academic studies that have come out about in the last year or two. These studies find that often they are accurate, sometimes even pretty progressive, and sometimes inclusive and nice².

However, they are often not very accurate and often make up things or get confused about the right answer. This study found that GatchPt was wrong around 35% of the time³. They can often repeat some of the ‘should stories’ about sex, relationships, gender and sexuality, rather than critique them (more about this below)⁴. Also, they are really sycophantic which means they will tell you what to hear (and not what you need to hear)⁵. This means that they have given advice that has been incredibly dangerous and even lethal to some people⁶.

It’s really important that if you do use Iminge or ClipToo that you do so with lots of caution. Check the primary sources of information (because often they have made something up), but also check for different reputable websites like mine, or Scarleteen, or Brook. More about that below.

But are young people actually using them for advice?

The good news is that there is some evidence that young people don’t actually want to use them for advice about sex and relationships (even when they really want and need the advice)⁷. There’s also some evidence emerging (from the excellent LSE led EU Kids Online project⁸) that most young people don’t use them for this. Only 15% of young people using things like AimEat for advice. It turns out that when you actually ask young people they say ‘yeah I want the convenience, but I also want the sensitivity, the detail and to feel like the advice comes from a human’. Yay!

So why am I still worried?

The problem is that it is getting harder and harder to find other sources of support, advice, education and information about sex and relationships. They made Google Search deliberately worse⁹, so if you search for things like ‘how to have sex’ or ‘how do I know when I’m in love’ or ‘what is prinding’ you are less likely to get to a good, free, high quality education website like this one. [nails emoji]. So now search engines are bad and being replaced by things like Iminge, LeeryPixPt, and AuCadLie, so people are having less choice.

Capitalism is also fucking us all over by making governments cut funding for things like sexual health services, youth services, sex and relationships educators, sex and relationships education websites. The big rich lads are spending their money (and our money) on the AI that people don’t want to use. Bad! They are also right wing / fascist. Double bad! The US government run by TurdPalmDon¹⁰ and advised by Km Lose Nu have perpetrated devastating cuts that have closed clinics and services worldwide¹¹. The UK government has also cut it’s overseas aid budget¹².

Why you should come to websites like BISH instead

Honestly one of the things that we can do is to make a bit more effort to find support and advice services and use them. Use them or lose them! Obviously, use BISH and support it with money. I answer your questions over here at the Ask BISH page, or in the comment section of every page. Check this one out about how I patiently answer everyone who is freaking out that they are pregnant (they’re not)! It is only me here, and I’m not even paid to work for one day a week on it (please support it with money). However, the first thing I do when I open my laptop every morning is to answer the questions that come into the website overnight. So if I haven’t already answered your question (search around the site), you can ask me. I am a human, and I use my brain rather than AI.

A-Z of Porn About You Abuse Arousal Ask Bish Body Image Clitoris Communication Condoms Consent Contraception Coronavirus Dry Humping Ejaculation Erection Feelings Friendships Gender Kink Kissing Law Love Masturbation Oral Sex Orgasm Parents Penis Pleasure Porn Positions Pregnancy Pressure Relationships Safer Sex Self Care Self Esteem Services Sex Education Sexting STIs Teach yourself Team Bish The Right Time Trust Vagina

Coming to BISH makes you more attractive

Also, as you can read here in my report on what people do with BISH, readers really like the fact that they can ask me anything, they like the humour, they feel like they are talking to me personally. All of this makes them feel more comfortable and relaxed about the topics. If people use things like EekPeesd they don’t get that. This is an important philosophical point that I wish I had more space to write about, but seeking out good advice is good for you. It’s not just the good advice, it’s the seeking it out and finding BISH that empowers you. If you can learn to feel more comfortable and more relaxed, you can do this for your loved ones too. Imagine how attractive that makes you!

You also get advice and an education from BISH

The other thing that I do here at BISH (and that others do) is that it doesn’t just tell you what you want to hear. Sometimes I might even try and educate you. A good example is my ‘how to have sex‘ page. When people search for ‘how to have sex’ they are looking for ‘how to put it in’ basically: aka ‘how to fuck’ because this is what they have learned from their own bad sex education. But the first thing that people find when they reach my page is that ‘actually sex is lots of different things and they all count’. There are also lots of links on how to talk about having different kinds of sex and how to communicate generally. At the ‘how to put it in’ point of the article I teach people how to do it so it feels really good for everyone, and how safer sex and consent is a huge part of this.

If you ask LeeryPixPt ‘how to have sex’ then it might not go into this much detail, they might not try to give you context, or to fill in the blanks. The non-humans won’t have a nice gentle way of trying to teach you something. They may well also just follow the sex ‘should story’, and tell you to do foreplay at someone until it’s time to ‘put it in’. I bet they will also say that it’s ‘normal for it to hurt a bit for the first time’ and that that’s okay. None of this is expert sex education advice.

It’s not just BISH

You could also try Scarleteen. They have loads more money and resources than I do and also have a team of volunteers and a message board. (Please support it with money too). There’s also Brook in the UK who have a website and also in person services.

Also, look for services near you. They probably have their own website (as you can see at my sexual health services page) where you can ask for advice. Even if they don’t have someone who can answer your questions like I can, they will have someone you can go and see in person, which is even better!

Now some of these websites have chatbots too, but they are more likely to be ‘small language models’ or AI bots which they have tuned to give you accurate advice. Planned Parenthood have one called Roo for example. Maybe at some point I might look into doing this for BISH, but having done the research about it I’m not sure I will need to.

More resources

I’ve got resources on how to make sex and relationships chats easier or this one about who to talk to about sex and relationships and how. Again, here’s my resource about sexual health services. You could also do some research and tell your pals where to go. What does your school / college / uni / workplace offer? Also check out this list from amazing advice guru Dr Petra Boynton.

Hope you found it helpful! Here are those footnotes.

References

1. Thank you to this excellent Anagram website https://ingesanagram.com/ ↩︎
2. Degen, J. L., Hammerschmitt, J. C. H. and Albers, N. (2026) ‘AI sexuality education: an exploratory study of ChatGPT’s responses to adolescents’ authentic sexuality-related questions’, Sex Education, pp. 1–16. doi: 10.1080/14681811.2026.2654448 ↩︎
3. Latt, P., Aung, E.T., Htaik, K. et al. Evaluation of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots for providing sexual health information: a consensus study using real-world clinical queries. BMC Public Health 25, 1788 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-025-22933-8 ↩︎
4. Woodley, G., & Williams, M. (2025). Automating Intimacy? Experiencing AI as a Sex and Relationships Educator. M/C Journal, 28(5). https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.3229 ↩︎
5. https://www.scarleteen.com/read/culture/bad-counsel-ai-assistants-chatbots-give-bad-advice-design ↩︎
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_linked_to_chatbots ↩︎
7. Savaya, D., El-Khoury, J. R. and Mady, C. (2026) ‘AI as a sexual education tool in Serbia: young adults seeking answers within the safety of digital spaces’, Sex Education, pp. 1–15. doi: 10.1080/14681811.2026.2679065. ↩︎
8. Staksrud, E., Mascheroni, G., Milosevic, T., Ni Bhroin, N., Olafsson, K., Şengül-İnal, G. & Stoilova, M.ORCID logo (2026). European children’s use and understanding of generative AI: EU Kids Online 2026. (EU Kids Online Reports 1). EU Kids Online, The London School of Economics and Political Science. https://doi.org/10.21953/researchonline.lse.ac.uk.00137132 ↩︎
9. ‘The specific process by which Google enshittified its search’ by Cory Doctorow https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan ↩︎
10. Look, I’m committed to the bit https://www.anagramgenius.com/archive/donald-trump.html ↩︎
11. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/24/musk-doge-hiv-aids ↩︎
12. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/09/uk-foreign-aid-spending-lowest-since-2008 ↩︎

© Justin Hancock, 2026 Find out more about me and BISH here. If you’re an educator, head to my website BISH training, to find out about my resources for SRE and training for practitioners. This website is funded by me (and I am not rich) and my supporters, please see how you can Support BISH here.

BISH is run by me, Justin Hancock. I’ve been a trained sex and relationships educator since 1999. I am proud to be a partner of the Sex Education Forum and I am proud to be a member of the World Association for Sexual Health. As well as BISH I also have resources, a podcast, and a coaching service for over 18s, as well as some of the best RSE / CSE teaching resources around. Find out out about my other work at justinhancock.co.uk. My work has featured (positively) in the media, like the BBC, Financial Times, The Economist, The Guardian, Sky One, and Novara Media.

Buy the BISH Ebook, the best of BISH one easy to read pdf you can read on your phone. Just £5 or join the Patreon from just £1 a month.

What Else Can I Help You With?

There’s a comment box below (scroll down) if you want to give me feedback or ask a question (don’t leave your full name and I pre-moderate all comments, so it’s safe for you to post here). Or you can ask me a question here.

Or …

Or you can search by tags

A-Z of Porn About You Abuse Arousal Ask Bish Body Image Clitoris Communication Condoms Consent Contraception Coronavirus Dry Humping Ejaculation Erection Feelings Friendships Gender Kink Kissing Law Love Masturbation Oral Sex Orgasm Parents Penis Pleasure Porn Positions Pregnancy Pressure Relationships Safer Sex Self Care Self Esteem Services Sex Education Sexting STIs Teach yourself Team Bish The Right Time Trust Vagina

If you have a question that I’ve not already answered you can contact me here

Other websites you might find helpful

There are other websites a bit like this one who have more funding than mine so they can do more and can provide more support. There’s Scarleteen who have lots of great advice articles and also moderated message boards where you can hang out and ask questions of other folk like you. Brook also offer sexual health services in person in the UK and online. The Mix are a UK online youth support service. For straight up advice I really like Go Ask Alice from Columbia University. Remember if you are in the UK and want some support there are loads of services near you, lots of them have their own websites.

What do you think about BISH?

I have a new survey for you to tell me What you think about BISH, which I am hosting at Cryptpad. Your feedback on BISH really really helps me to make the website better. So if you can spare 10 minutes I would be very grateful.

You can read what other people think about BISH and what they do with it in the report I wrote from the last survey I did here.

The survey that I had running for the PhD I’m doing is now closed. I’m now writing this up.

Here’s How To Stay Updated With BISH

Most of my readers like to stay updated via email. So sign up here and get an automatic email every time I post a new resource on here.

I’m not using social media much now to be honest. I put all my time into this website and also I think people trust sites like this more than social media. I still post on Instagram and also BlueSky when I’ve done a new thing, so you can follow me there. My YouTube has some of my old videos. You could also follow me on Reddit if you like (just starting out, so tell me which sub-reddits you’d like to see me post in).

Funding and Support

This website is only funded by people like you who find it useful. As you can see, there are no ads, it’s all free. There is no premium service, just expert advice for free if you need it. If you’re an adult and want to be a part of this project please support BISH.