From an adult magazine, ‘Playboy’, selling on the corner of the street to the first kissing scene filmed (of course, it was so notorious back then), the advanced technologies have driven everything forward to the AI era, and so do porn.
Nowadays, the adult industry has run mainly on online platforms. There are legal adult websites from various countries around the world. You can explore the adult world with just one click. Technologies are also adopted to improve the production, create a more realistic experience to the level that it seems like we are an actor ourselves, and even produce AI-generated porn.
We might already be familiar with AI deployed in several industries. However, for the adult industry, it is no less eye-opening and worth keeping in mind. In this article, we will explore the uses of AI in the adult industry and see if any issue is worth discussing. Let’s find out!
‘VR’ provides users with more realistic experiences in watching porn.
Using VR or virtual reality for realistic experiences is the technology that has been developed in these five years. VR is a headset that provides 3D simulated reality. This technology is widely used in, for example, the gaming industry and the medical industry. VR combined with adult films allows us to experience more realistic porn, so real that it is as if we are one of the actors.
In 2014, Ela Darling recorded the first porn for VR. Then, the world of VR porn started to flourish. PornHub, one of the most famous adult websites, added the category ‘VR porn’ which gained lots of popularity.
What we see through the VR headset is a 3D world. We can choose the perspectives of 180°, 360°, or POV (Point of view) perspective, the first-person perspective that gets to the next level of reality. VR is now a rather prevalent tool causing VR porn to gain more popularity. Its real and exotic experiences make the VR porn industry tirelessly grow. Adopting VR in the adult industry shows the creative way of utilising technology to leverage our entertainment.
AI-generated porn may not solve ethical problems and may increase the abuse.
Apart from VR, due to the progress of technology, AI-generated porn is a piece of cake. Phil Wang, an Uber engineer, used machine learning to develop a system ‘GAN’ whose algorithm can generate faces that don’t exist.
He created a website https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ which shows us strangers’ faces. Every time we refresh the web page, it shows us a new face. These faces were generated by an AI algorithm. They don’t really exist. This technology can be further developed to use in many industries, especially in the adult industry. Not long after, a Japanese company developed an AI algorithm that generated a full body of simulated people. They can also move smoothly, just like a human does.
GAN works by training its model with numerous images of faces. If you want GAN to generate nudes, all you have to do is to train it with nudes. In 2019, a company developed an app that sells ai-generated nudes.
This technology can create porn without using real actors. Therefore, some may think that, on the bright side, it can reduce the abuse in the adult industry because no human has to take the risk.
Nonetheless, the nudes we use to train the model are still images of real people who may not even consent to have their images used. That was why the selling-nudes app closed down due to heavy criticism.
Besides, this technology may result in a lot of people in the industry losing their jobs. It will be even worse if we are likely to dare to produce more extreme and violent content because the actors are not real anyway. Think about what would happen if those contents were released into society.
‘Deepfake’ and ‘Deepnude’ violate people and even ruin their lives
These possibilities indicate that AI-generated porn may not solve the problems. We already have to deal with Deepfake technology that creates synthetic images of existing people. 96% of Deepfake uses are to generate fake porn or nudes. It extremely violates and damages victims’ lives. Having AI-generated porn will not reduce the demand for porn with real actors and certainly, not stop Deepfake either. If we can come up with a way or technology that prevents this misuse, we believe that this technology will eventually create more advantages.
PorhHub uses AI to remaster the vintage erotic films.
Now, let’s take a look at the creative use of AI in the adult industry. In May, PornHub, one of the most popular adult websites, launched its project ‘Remastured’. The site used AI to remaster 100-year-old erotic films by colourising, reducing noise, sharpening, and contrasting images. One of the oldest films is dated back to 1896. It was such a historical moment.
PornHub used 100,000 nudes to train the model to colourise. It also boosted the videos to run in 4K. One of the movies used in this project is “The Kiss” (1896). It is the first movie that has a kissing scene, which was hugely progressive back then.
PornHub uses AI to tag pornstar names and categorises the videos
Moreover, since 2017, PornHub has utilised AI to help tag actors’ names in almost 5 million videos on its platform. Facial recognition is used to identify 10,000 actors’ faces. The name list in the database contains only professional actors, so there is no worry for immature actors who don’t want to be recognised. They also developed the system to categorise the videos, for example, “Public” and “blonde”.
The use of AI in the adult industry demonstrated that AI can be utilised in every area. What should be concerned is the proper use and the privacy issue. If we use AI in a way that is positive and avoids misuse, It can drive the world to a better future.
References:
- https://bigthink.com/partnerships/virtual-reality-porn-reality-lovers?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2
- https://grahammaloney7.medium.com/how-vr-porn-impacted-in-porn-industry-d951eb4a72e9
- https://screenshot-media.com/technology/sex-tech/ai-generated-porn/
- https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/feb/07/ai-in-the-adult-industry-porn-may-soon-feature-people-who-dont-exist
- https://www.engadget.com/pornhub-ai-machine-learning-erotica-remaster-4k-180016611.html
- https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/11/16459646/pornhub-machine-learning-ai-video-tagging
- https://fightthenewdrug.org/would-ai-generated-nudes-solve-the-ethical-problems-of-porn-sites/
Written by: Sertis
Originally published at https://www.sertiscorp.com/
