AI is coming for the NSFW emoji chain text

• Emojipasta are silly, innuendo-laded texts often sent as a chain. They're full of NSFW emojis — and popular.
• They're hard to make yourself, but AI tools can create them easily. Does that make them lose something?
• "A computer will never feel rage. A computer will never feel horny," one Redditor said.

As AI continues to make breakthroughs in live-saving medicine and anime facsimile, it threatens one of the greatest new art forms that has developed this century: the NSFW emoji chain text.

Here's some context in case you've never been sent one of these. This is the start of a rare safe-for-work example about the EZ-Pass scam texts that have been going around:

‼️‼️????????????E-ZPASS ???????? FINAL ????????????❌ ❌REMINDER⏰⏰⏰????: YOU????????????HAVE ????AN OUTSTANDING ????????????????TOLL‼️????????????????????‼️‼️???????????????????????? YOUR TOLL ???????? ACCOUNT ????????????????BALANCE????‍♀️⚖️⚖️ IS ????????????OUTSTANDING ????????????‼️‼️

It goes on from there, but we'll cut it off for a family-friendly website.

These emojipasta texts are like chain letters, in theory. They're full of emojis and usually sexualized language. They're meant to be funny, not actually sexy. (I don't think anyone is sending these to someone they intend to seduce (if you somehow have, congrats to you).

Why do these exist, and where did they originate? Well, they're funny, so that's the why. And while the origins aren't clear, a lot of them seem to come from Reddit's r/emojipasta (based on the term "copypasta," internet slang for a text that gets passed around and copied).

The emojipasta subreddit is updated nearly daily — most are related to minor holidays or events, or sometimes based on requests for someone to make something new.

For example, a recent one celebrating the Ides of March included the line, "Caesar???? said 'et tu, BOOTEH????,' before he SASHAYED AWAY???? from life????!"

An emojipasta about the new trade tariffs ended with a warning: "SEND ✉️ THIS TO 10 PATRIOTIC THICC ???? TRADE WARRIORS ???????? AND YOU'LL GET A TAX CUT ????✨. IGNORE IT, AND YOU'LL PAY DOUBLE AT THE STORE ????️????‼️"

I've actually tried writing my own for events or inside jokes with friends. It's genuinely hard! I found myself copying aspects of other chain texts to get inspiration about where to put the ???? emojis.

Which is why these are a perfect place for AI to come in: The subreddit suggested an Emoji Pasta Generator, made by New York-based engineer Abhishyant Khare. The sparse webpage asks for a topic and then can reliably spit out an actually pretty good suggestive emoji pasta. (I tested it — it's really good.) Khare also made an iMessage extension.

"My friends and I were discussing who would be replaced by AI first as a joke, and then my friend Vivek sent one of these texts in our group chat," Khare told Business Insider. "I realized I could probably replace Vivek with AI since he mostly just sends these types of texts, and got to work building the emoji pasta maker, and the rest is history."

But does using AI take the fun out of it?

Seems like a smart use of AI, but are there ethical considerations when it comes to this suggestive art form? (And does having a computer generate it just take some of the fun out of it all?)

I asked the moderators of r/emojipasta what they thought about AI-generated texts and whether they were even allowed on the subreddit.

"We have discussed banning AI-generated content in here because, frankly, it seems lazy to use a bot instead of writing it yourself," said Drew Robinson, one of r/emojipasta's moderators. "However, so far, we haven't seen the need to outright ban it as a lot of the AI-generated content gets downvoted because frankly, it sucks."

Robinson conceded that some posts on the subreddit were probably made by AI and had even managed to get some upvotes.

There's still a strong tradition of human-crafted emojipasta.

For example, Bailey, a 28-year-old from the Seatle area, noticed the subreddit didn't have a good chain text to celebrate the Seattle Mariners baseball season opening day and was determined to make one himself.

Bailey (who requested not to use his last name so that he is not forever associated on the internet with baseball-related smut) did it the truly old-fashioned way, with a pencil and paper.

"Thought about an overall MLB one, but knew more jokes I could make with the Mariners," he said. "Did a first draft on a price of paper then showed a couple of my friends who suggested edits and helped add the emojis."

As I browsed through the subreddit, I started to notice some patterns. Some posts had the hallmarks of ChatGPT — the use of bullet points, or ones that merely interspersed emojis through an otherwise normal sentence, lacking the erratic capitalization and ribald puns that truly suggestive chain texts have.

Bailey's filthy Mariner's post stood out to me as particularly human — creative, suggestive, making full use of baseball-related innuendo, and full of emojis. It was somehow even more filthy than one a few days later about Hooters filing for bankruptcy.

Something's lost with bot-written NSFW text chains

In theory, these emojipasta are perfect for AI — they're labor-intensive and annoying for humans to do (finding all the emojis in your keyboard is a pain!), have a reliably predictable tone and verbiage, and rely on general knowledge of current and historical events.

And yet, it does seem something is lost if it's AI-written. For me, part of the humor is just knowing that someone spent time writing these — the "I can't believe someone did that" factor. Knowing it's as easy as a few words in a prompt box takes the magic out of it.

For Robinson, it's more existential: "It's not like these are particularly high-brow pieces of art," he said. "But at the same time, a computer will never feel rage. A computer will never feel horny."