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This vision for the industry’s future raises a host of difficult questions: How do you compensate performers whose likenesses are used to create AI content? Will consumers like Maupin be excited by AI porn at all?
Adult entertainment is a giant industry accounting for a substantial chunk of all internet traffic: Major porn sites get more monthly visitors and page views than Amazon, Netflix, TikTok or Zoom, according to published last year in the Journal of Sex Research. The industry is a habitual early adopter of new technology, including VHS, DVD and dot com. In the mid-2000s, porn companies set up massive sites where users could upload and watch free videos, and ad sales footed the bills. As the 2010s progressed, adult stars mastered social media marketing, and many migrated to subscription streaming platforms rather than chasing contracts with major studios.
By 2013, it all fell apart. The self-described science-fiction nerd watched his revenue dry up after Pornhub — the tube site Jones refers to as the “evil empire” — started hosting free content. He ended up leaving the adult industry for a mainstream tech job.
“We do not tolerate any nonconsensual content on the site and we remove all said content as soon as we are made aware of it,” a spokesperson told me in an email. “Nonconsensual content directly violates our TOS [terms of service] and consists of content such as revenge porn, deepfakes or anything published without a person’s consent or permission.” Pornhub previously told Mashable that that are flagged by users.
“It’s not a porn site. It’s a predatory website that doesn’t rely on the consent of the people on the actual website,” Martin said about MrDeepFakes. “The fact that it’s even allowed to operate and is known is a complete indictment of every regulator in the space, of all law enforcement, of the entire system, that this is even allowed to exist.”
