Generative AI pornography

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Generative AI pornography or simply AI pornography refers to digitally created explicit content produced through generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Unlike traditional pornography, which involves real actors and cameras, this content is synthesized entirely by AI algorithms. [1] These algorithms, including Generative adversarial network (GANs) and text-to-image models, generate lifelike images, videos, or animations from textual descriptions or datasets.

Contents

History

The use of generative AI in the adult industry began in the late 2010s, initially focusing on AI-generated art, music, and visual content. [2] This trend accelerated in 2022 with Stability AI's release of Stable Diffusion (SD), an open-source text-to-image model that enables users to generate images, including NSFW content, from text prompts using the LAION-Aesthetics subset of the LAION-5B dataset. [3] [4] [5] Despite Stability AI's warnings against sexual imagery, SD's public release led to dedicated communities exploring both artistic and explicit content, sparking ethical debates over open-access AI and its use in adult media. [6] [7] [8] By 2020[ dubious – discuss ], AI tools had advanced to generate highly realistic adult content, amplifying calls for regulation. [1] [9]

AI-generated influencers

One application of generative AI technology is the creation of AI-generated influencers on platforms such as OnlyFans and Instagram. [10] [11] [2] These AI personas interact with users in ways that can mimic real human engagement, offering an entirely synthetic but convincing experience. [12] While popular among niche audiences, these virtual influencers have prompted discussions about authenticity, consent, and the blurring line between human and AI-generated content, especially in adult entertainment. [13]

The growth of AI porn sites

By 2023, websites dedicated to AI-generated adult content had gained traction, catering to audiences seeking customizable experiences. [9] [10] These platforms allow users to create or view AI-generated pornography tailored to their preferences. [1] [14] These platforms enable users to create or view AI-generated adult content appealing to different preferences through prompts and tags, customizing body type, facial features, and art styles. [15] [16] Tags further refine the output, creating niche and diverse content. Many sites feature extensive image libraries and continuous content feeds, combining personalization with discovery and enhancing user engagement. AI porn sites, therefore, attract those seeking unique or niche experiences, sparking debates on creativity and the ethical boundaries of AI in adult media. [17] [9]

Ethical concerns and misuse

The growth of generative AI pornography has also attracted some cause for criticism. [9] [10] [14] AI technology can be exploited to create non-consensual pornographic material, posing risks similar to those seen with deepfake revenge porn and AI-generated NCII (Non-Consensual Intimate Image). [18] A 2023 analysis found that 98% of deepfake videos online are pornographic, with 99% of the victims being women. [19] Some famous celebrities victims of deepfake include Scarlett Johansson, Taylor Swift, and Maisie Williams. [12]

OpenAI is exploring whether NSFW content, such as erotica, can be responsibly generated in age-appropriate contexts while maintaining its ban on deepfakes. [20] This proposal has attracted criticism from child safety campaigners who argue it undermines OpenAI's mission to develop "safe and beneficial" AI. [7] Additionally, the Internet Watch Foundation has raised concerns about AI being used to generate sexual abuse content involving children. [21]

AI-generated NCII (AI Undress)

Several US states are taking actions against using deepfake apps and sharing them on the internet. [22] [23] In 2024, San Francisco filed a landmark lawsuit to shut down "undress" apps that allow users to generate non-consensual AI nude images, citing violations of state laws. [24] The case aligns with California's recent legislation—SB 926, SB 942, and SB 981—championed by Senators Aisha Wahab and Josh Becker and signed by Governor Gavin Newsom. These bills aim to protect individuals from AI-generated explicit images by criminalizing non-consensual distribution, mandating disclosures, and empowering victims to report and remove harmful content from platforms. [23] [25]

Differences from deepfake pornography

While both generative AI pornography and deepfake pornography rely on synthetic media, they differ significantly in their methods and ethical considerations. [12] Deepfake pornography typically involves altering existing footage of real individuals, often without their consent, using AI to superimpose faces or modify scenes. [17] [19] In contrast, generative AI pornography is created using algorithms, producing hyper-realistic content without the need to upload real pictures of people. [8] [7] Hany Farid, digital image analysis expert, also described the difference between "AI porn" and "deepfake porn." [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human image synthesis</span> Computer generation of human images

Human image synthesis is technology that can be applied to make believable and even photorealistic renditions of human-likenesses, moving or still. It has effectively existed since the early 2000s. Many films using computer generated imagery have featured synthetic images of human-like characters digitally composited onto the real or other simulated film material. Towards the end of the 2010s deep learning artificial intelligence has been applied to synthesize images and video that look like humans, without need for human assistance, once the training phase has been completed, whereas the old school 7D-route required massive amounts of human work .

Porn 2.0 is a term derived from "Web 2.0" that describes pornographic websites featuring amateur content and interactive social networking features, such as user-generated categorization, webcam hosting, blogs, and comment sections. This is in contrast to the static content offered by "Web 1.0" porn sites. Porn 2.0 sites may offer features similar to mainstream Web 2.0 services such as video communities, including Meta café, Vimeo, and YouTube, as well as social sites,, general blogging platforms, and photo hosting services.

Revenge porn is the distribution of sexually explicit images or videos of individuals without their consent, with the punitive intention to create public humiliation or character assassination out of revenge against the victim. The material may have been made by an ex-partner from an intimate relationship with the knowledge and consent of the subject at the time, or it may have been made without their knowledge. The subject may have experienced sexual violence during the recording of the material, in some cases facilitated by psychoactive chemicals such as date rape drugs which also cause a reduced sense of pain and involvement in the sexual act, dissociative effects and amnesia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pornhub</span> Pornographic video-sharing website owned by Aylo

Pornhub is a Canadian-owned internet pornography video-sharing website, one of several owned by adult entertainment conglomerate Aylo. As of August 2024, Pornhub is the 16th-most-visited website in the world and the most-visited adult website.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deepfake</span> Realistic artificially generated media

Deepfakes are images, videos, or audio which are edited or generated using artificial intelligence tools, and which may depict real or non-existent people. They are a type of synthetic media and modern form of a Media prank.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Artificial intelligence art</span> Visual media created with AI

Artificial intelligence art is visual artwork created or enhanced through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) programs.

Fake nude photography is the creation of nude photographs designed to appear as genuine nudes of an individual. The motivations for the creation of these modified photographs include curiosity, sexual gratification, the stigmatization or embarrassment of the subject, and commercial gain, such as through the sale of the photographs via pornographic websites. Fakes can be created using image editing software or through machine learning. Fake images created using the latter method are called deepfakes.

Synthetic media is a catch-all term for the artificial production, manipulation, and modification of data and media by automated means, especially through the use of artificial intelligence algorithms, such as for the purpose of misleading people or changing an original meaning. Synthetic media as a field has grown rapidly since the creation of generative adversarial networks, primarily through the rise of deepfakes as well as music synthesis, text generation, human image synthesis, speech synthesis, and more. Though experts use the term "synthetic media," individual methods such as deepfakes and text synthesis are sometimes not referred to as such by the media but instead by their respective terminology Significant attention arose towards the field of synthetic media starting in 2017 when Motherboard reported on the emergence of AI altered pornographic videos to insert the faces of famous actresses. Potential hazards of synthetic media include the spread of misinformation, further loss of trust in institutions such as media and government, the mass automation of creative and journalistic jobs and a retreat into AI-generated fantasy worlds. Synthetic media is an applied form of artificial imagination.

Deepfake pornography, or simply fake pornography, is a type of synthetic pornography that is created via altering already-existing photographs or video by applying deepfake technology to the images of the participants. The use of deepfake pornography has sparked controversy because it involves the making and sharing of realistic videos featuring non-consenting individuals, typically female celebrities, and is sometimes used for revenge porn. Efforts are being made to combat these ethical concerns through legislation and technology-based solutions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Midjourney</span> Image-generating machine learning model

Midjourney is a generative artificial intelligence program and service created and hosted by the San Francisco-based independent research lab Midjourney, Inc. Midjourney generates images from natural language descriptions, called prompts, similar to OpenAI's DALL-E and Stability AI's Stable Diffusion. It is one of the technologies of the AI boom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stable Diffusion</span> Image-generating machine learning model

Stable Diffusion is a deep learning, text-to-image model released in 2022 based on diffusion techniques. The generative artificial intelligence technology is the premier product of Stability AI and is considered to be a part of the ongoing artificial intelligence boom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LAION</span> Non-profit German artificial intelligence organization

LAION is a German non-profit which makes open-sourced artificial intelligence models and datasets. It is best known for releasing a number of large datasets of images and captions scraped from the web which have been used to train a number of high-profile text-to-image models, including Stable Diffusion and Imagen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Text-to-video model</span> Machine learning model

A text-to-video model is a machine learning model that uses a natural language description as input to produce a video relevant to the input text. Advancements during the 2020s in the generation of high-quality, text-conditioned videos have largely been driven by the development of video diffusion models.

Prisma Labs is a software company based in Sunnyvale, California that is known for developing Prisma and Lensa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Generative artificial intelligence</span> AI system capable of generating content in response to prompts

Generative artificial intelligence is a subset of artificial intelligence that uses generative models to produce text, images, videos, or other forms of data. These models learn the underlying patterns and structures of their training data and use them to produce new data based on the input, which often comes in the form of natural language prompts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AI boom</span> Ongoing period of rapid progress in artificial intelligence

The AI boom is an ongoing period of rapid progress in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) that started in the late 2010s before gaining international prominence in the early 2020s. Examples include protein folding prediction led by Google DeepMind as well as large language models and generative AI applications developed by OpenAI. This period is sometimes referred to as an AI spring, to contrast it with previous AI winters.

In the 2020s, the rapid advancement of deep learning-based generative artificial intelligence models raised questions about whether copyright infringement occurs when such are trained or used. This includes text-to-image models such as Stable Diffusion and large language models such as ChatGPT. As of 2023, there were several pending U.S. lawsuits challenging the use of copyrighted data to train AI models, with defendants arguing that this falls under fair use.

In late January 2024, sexually explicit AI-generated deepfake images of American musician Taylor Swift were proliferated on social media platforms 4chan and X. Several artificial images of Swift of a sexual or violent nature were quickly spread, with one post reported to have been seen over 47 million times before its eventual removal. The images led Microsoft to enhance Microsoft Designer's text-to-image model to prevent future abuse. Moreover, these images prompted responses from anti-sexual assault advocacy groups, US politicians, Swifties, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, among others, and it has been suggested that Swift's influence could result in new legislation regarding the creation of deepfake pornography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Artificial intelligence and elections</span> Use and impact of AI on political elections

As artificial intelligence (AI) has become more mainstream, there is growing concern about how this will influence elections. Potential targets of AI include election processes, election offices, election officials and election vendors.

Civitai is an online platform and marketplace for generative AI content, primarily focused on AI-generated images and models.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Dubé, Simon; Lapointe, Valerie A. (April 9, 2024). "AI-generated pornography will disrupt the adult content industry and raise new ethical concerns". The Conversation . Retrieved October 8, 2024.
  2. 1 2 "Deepfake pornography could be a growing problem as AI editing programs become more sophisticated - CBS News". CBS News . April 17, 2023. Retrieved October 31, 2024.
  3. ↑ Cole, Samantha (December 20, 2023). "Largest Dataset Powering AI Images Removed After Discovery of Child Sexual Abuse Material". 404 Media . Retrieved October 31, 2024.
  4. ↑ "Stable Diffusion launch announcement". Stability AI . Retrieved October 31, 2024.
  5. ↑ "Stable Diffusion 2.0 Release". Stability AI . Retrieved October 31, 2024.
  6. ↑ Silberling, Amanda; Wiggers, Kyle (September 2, 2022). "AI is getting better at generating porn". TechCrunch . Retrieved October 31, 2024.
  7. 1 2 3 Harwell, Drew (June 19, 2023). "AI-generated child sex images spawn new nightmare for the web". The Washington Post . Retrieved October 31, 2024.
  8. 1 2 Rowland, Tim (April 13, 2023). "AI porn is now a thing, and I'm ready to let the modern culture bus go on without me". Herald-Mail Media. Retrieved October 31, 2024.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Weiss, Ben (February 18, 2024). "Can AI porn be ethical?". The Guardian . Retrieved October 31, 2024.
  10. 1 2 3 Pandey, Kamya (March 30, 2023). "AI in the Porn Industry: Exploring the Benefits, Risks and Ethical Concerns - Jumpstart Magazine". Jumpstart Magazine. Retrieved October 8, 2024.
  11. ↑ Tangermann, Victor (November 27, 2023). "Creators of Fake Influencer Say She's Generating $11,000/Month". Futurism. Retrieved October 31, 2024.
  12. 1 2 3 Marr, Bernard (September 27, 2019). "How AI Is Transforming Porn And Adult Entertainment". Forbes . Retrieved November 2, 2024.
  13. 1 2 Dickson, Ej (April 10, 2023). "They're Selling Nudes of Imaginary Women on Reddit -- and It's Working". Rolling Stone . Retrieved November 2, 2024.
  14. 1 2 A. Lapointe, Valerie; Dubé, Simon (April 9, 2024). "AI-generated pornography will disrupt the adult content industry and raise new ethical concerns". Yahoo News . Retrieved October 31, 2024.
  15. ↑ "How To Use Prompting And Tags More Effectively". CreatePorn.com. January 25, 2024. Retrieved October 31, 2024.
  16. ↑ Rebelo, Miguel (May 25, 2023). "How to write effective AI art prompts". Zapier . Retrieved October 31, 2024.
  17. 1 2 "Will AI porn transform adult entertainment – and is that a good thing?". The Week . February 29, 2024. Retrieved November 4, 2024.
  18. ↑ "The Ethics of Customizable AI-generated Pornography". DePauw University . Retrieved November 7, 2024.
  19. 1 2 Hurst, Luke (October 20, 2023). "How AI is driving an explosive rise in deepfake pornography". Euronews . Retrieved November 7, 2024.
  20. ↑ Knibbs, Kate (May 8, 2024). "OpenAI Is 'Exploring' How to Responsibly Generate AI Porn". Wired . Retrieved October 8, 2024.
  21. ↑ "OpenAI considers allowing users to create AI-generated pornography". The Guardian . May 9, 2024. Retrieved November 7, 2024.
  22. ↑ Williams, Kaylee (September 12, 2024). "US States Struggle to Define "Deepfakes" and Related Terms as Technically Complex Legislation Proliferates". Tech Policy Press. Retrieved November 7, 2024.
  23. 1 2 "The Urgent Need For U S Deepfake Pornography Laws State Action Leads The Way". CreatePorn.com. No. September 27, 2024. Retrieved November 4, 2024.
  24. ↑ O'Brien, Matt; Hadero, Haleluya (August 16, 2024). "San Francisco goes after websites that make AI deepfake nudes of women and girls". AP News . Retrieved November 7, 2024.
  25. ↑ Day, Brian (September 25, 2024). "California cracks down on AI-generated 'sexually explicit deepfakes'". Ventura County Star . Retrieved November 4, 2024.
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