Porn has always been an early adopter of emerging tech.
Without adult entertainment, "there's a very good chance that the VCR might never have taken off," author Patchen Barss writes in The Erotic Engine. Same can be said of many technological advancements, like the switch from HD-DVDs to Bluray and the ease with which people can make online payments.
Fast forward to now. People have tried to dismiss AI adult entertainment services by saying their users are being duped into thinking they're interacting with a real person. But many of the people who use them know exactly what they're getting and say naysayers miss the infinitely customizable and on-demand point of AI-generated porn.
Why AI Porn?
Pornderful co-founder Tommy Isacs told Decrypt that AI porn “unlocks a realm of fantasies, delivering tailor-made and personalized adult content at the click of a button.”
The ability to personalize feeds a fundamental human urge.
“Our users can explore unique scenarios or preferences that can’t be found in traditional adult content, fulfilling their exact desires,” he said. “Who would ever believe that within 10 seconds, you could generate naughty images of the girl of your dreams?”
Unlike human porn's reliance on studios and actors, AI porn essentially offers infinite variety at the click of a button. "You can start with a model fully clothed… and make her evolve rendering her naked, change her lingerie, change her outfit, place her in different sex positions," John Rabbit from AI-Porn told Decrypt. To him, it's "like an infinite realistic video game that evolves in real time with the community."
Rabbit also sees AI as a tool to balance the scales, not just in the sex game but in the general scope of human need for interaction.
“AI porn is the solution for sexual misery. Because we are living today a massive change in relationships. Dating apps and social networks ruined the chances for an average guy to meet women.” John says. He went on to explain that women have access to a lot of potential interests, which makes it harder for the average man to compete against richer, more popular competitors. “AI rebalances things," he said. "Guys can now create their own virtual woman to compensate for this lack of relationship."
Ricardo is another AI fan, but has an unusual background: He is a willing victim of an AI scam. The Telegram group “Tu Latina Sexy” has over 135 thousand members and features hundreds of AI-generated photos of, well, sexy latina women. However, men interact with this AI model as if it was real.
Decrypt asked him if he knew it was AI. “So what?” he replied.
“Men pay for prostitutes to make them think they are great sex machines, not just to have sex. Just like that, I don’t care if I’m talking to a fat guy in a prison cell, I spend money on what makes me feel good and this whole sensation is just similar (if not better) to what another woman provides, so yeah, I pay for satisfaction,” he concluded.
This on-demand fulfillment of sexual imagination explains the appeal. According to PornX, their data shows users are "motivated to pay for AI-generated content due to their individual preferences," which can be “fully implemented” in the form of an AI generated image, and this is where the money is.
“AI will definitely redefine economic models in the adult entertainment industry by enabling new revenue streams and reducing production costs,” a PornX spokesperson told Decrypt. “Now we are very interested in expanding our marketing strategy and would like to include more premium content, partnerships and advertising.” Right now the platform relies on Patreon for its supporters to pay for its services.
For many of these platforms, the profitability issue is not a matter of if, but when. "The adult industry will be seriously in trouble when it will be possible to generate your own interactive porn movie with AI. It's a question of time," John Rabbit from AI Porn said.
In general terms, the most expensive part of these startups' operations is the huge amount of GPU power required to generate images. The business becomes profitable when it generates enough revenue to pay those costs.
The Dark Side of Things
But a line has to be drawn somewhere. There's a reason why many of the unique tastes that can be satisfied with AI are too much for the porn industry. Whether it’s good or bad to use AI to satisfy questionable or dark fetishes is debatable. But if games like GTA or Call of Duty already let people enter a world in which they can become mass murderers and have fun with that. Can the same argument be applied to AI porn?
The answer will depend on the legal system the user is in. In most parts of the world, fictional NSFW AI images are considered legal. That changes if the images include minors. It’s dangerous playing chicken with the legal system, especially considering that some states in the U.S. are already making moves to ban the practice.
To combat this, all AI platforms set extensive filters. The most common measures include banning thousands of keywords like “10 years old, little girl” to balancing workaround keywords like “flat chest” or “teen” and using them as automatic negative prompts. This process is continuously curated as prompt hackers come up with creative ideas to bypass filters. If that is detected, they can be banned from the platform.
Beyond this, there is also a risk associated with deepfakes or revenge porn. As Decrypt previously reported, as of 2020, 48 states and Washington, D.C. had criminalized revenge pornography but only three U.S. states had laws specifically addressing deepfake pornographic content in February 2023. Victims of these kinds of edits reportedly experience feelings of humiliation, dehumanization, fear, anxiety, and more.
The use of AI makes it possible to inpaint an image, and change its appearance, basically opening the gates to undress any person on the internet. It is extremely easy and can be done in seconds, and most of the times the only thing that stands between a malicious user and a deepfake nude is a banner, just like the ones that make it possible for a 12 year old to click “I’m 18” and watch the whole catalog of the largest porn providers on the internet.
This whole undressing feature divides the way actors think about the industry. "People have to differentiate deepfake from AI-generators because it's
not the same thing. Deepfake is illegal. Ai generator is not," John Rabbit told Decrypt. But other sites think that such services can be useful if proper guardrails are set. "Imagine undressing someone you love and lost, or changing clothes of an unpleasant photo" the administrator of a Telegram bot that supports inpainting and deepfaking told Decrypt. "all services have risks and businesses should provide limits to make sure they are being properly used"
The future of AI Porn and a society hungry for pleasure
DucHaiten is the creator of a lot of popular Stable Diffusion models with NSFW capabilities. He believes the technology could revolutionize the adult industry. "I always laugh at the problem that AI will replace humans, AI will kick humans out of their game. It's all bullshit, AI is just a tool," he told Decrypt.
In his view, AI porn can enhance human-made content, not eliminate it.
"Imagine the actors becoming more beautiful, they can transform into fantasy characters without makeup, the film lighting will be more beautiful, the camera angles will be more beautiful, the realistic context will be larger." He explained that a low-budget porn film can achieve the quality of an expensive Hollywood movie thanks to AI.
“I would definitely like to see porn movies like that," he said.
“The flow of porn content consumption will be changed forever” Tommy Isaacs from Ponderful said, explaining that users won’t have to search for what they want to see, they will just create it. AI seems to be propelling innovation in the adult space, and the technology seems poised to unlock new creative possibilities while potentially amplifying ethical risks if misused.
Some may see echoes of Aldous Huxley's novel “Brave New World,” where society placates itself with endless synthetic pleasures. Yet the sterile comforts of his dystopia leave an undercurrent of longing for the real and meaningful.
“Fewer and fewer men are engaging in those risks, and I think AI and the combination with sex bots is going to create an industry where men start having relationships with algorithms and dolls,” Scott Galloway, a professor from NYU said in an interview for The Diary of a CEO podcast .
Ultimately, one uniquely human desire remains irreplaceable at our core — the need for genuine intimacy and connection. No flawless AI fantasy can ever substitute for the messy, vulnerable reality of being human. And in a world increasingly blurred by algorithms, holding onto that humanity may prove our greatest challenge.