Late last year, a new phenomenon graced our screens. AI pimping. This is where people weaponize AI to diminish the work of adult content creators.
It involves people superimposing artificially generated faces onto the naked bodies of real adult entertainers.
One specific case identified Antonio Alvaro as a member of a prolific international AI pimping group that would use adult stars’ images without permission.
Alvaro and others would create artificially generated faces and transfer them onto the bodies of real adult film stars. They did this purely to sell subscriptions to pornographic services.
The services would be OnlyFans-esque sites like Fanvue, where users can pay for pornographic videos and images of the “AI model.”
Media outlets like Wired and 404 Media reported on this new-fangled trend that exploits female content creators for profit.
Which got me thinking. Is AI ushering in a new age of digital misogyny? Is it ruining the porn industry, and what effect does this have on real people? I turned to experts to dig deeper into the implications of AI pimping and whether it promotes digital misogyny.
Can anyone become an AI pimp?
“It seems too easy,” said Emily Kohlman, an intelligence analyst at a security company, Blackbird.AI.
“There’s a lack of comprehensive federal regulation regarding AI, and that’s part of the reason that AI evolved so quickly.”
Kohlman explained that AI encompasses a range of different tools and capabilities, not all of which are used maliciously. But unfortunately, it's all too easy to create, maintain, and successfully run these types of accounts.
“You don't have to be some sort of tech genius to do it,” said Roberta Duffield, head of intelligence at Blackbird.AI.
“There are people who advertise themselves as being creators in the space. There’s a whole underworld of people that will do this for money and do it pretty cheaply.”
There’s a whole subgroup that’s using AI maliciously. In this case, people are stealing from female content creators who may already have a hard enough time convincing people that it's a legitimate profession.
How do they do it?
While this isn’t one of those get-rich-quick guides to AI pimping that are circulating all over the internet, Duffield believes that it’s relatively easy to become an AI pimp simply using apps.
“You can literally just Google “face swapping app,” “generative AI app” or “deepfake app” and you’ll be able to find something.” There are even forums on Reddit where you can find people to do the work for you.
However, AI is used not only to create pornography, but it is also used to sell its product.
“There might be AI-generated bots who interact with potential customers before, making it more likely that they will subscribe to the site,” Kohlman said.
Reinforcing digital gender bias
While speaking to both Duffield and Kohlman, we discussed the implications that AI pimping has on pornographic creators who are exploited for profit.
Duffield mentioned that “the victims of this are 99.9% likely to be women. There’s a gender bias here. Secondly, the perpetrators are 99.9% likely to be men.”
This informs, as Duffield said, a gender bias, which naturally harms female content creators looking to be taken seriously.
Furthermore, “AI pimping and non-consensual deepfake pornography strips legitimate revenue from adult content creators,” Duffield continues.
One indicator of misogyny is also stealing the ideas or content created by female creators and not attributing that content style, image, or piece of intellectual property to that woman.
This issue then inevitably bleeds into the physical world as people begin to embody these kinds of behaviors in their real lives.
It’s not just having creators but consumers
But it's not only the creators who are at a financial or even emotional disadvantage here. It's also the consumers of this content.
On most social media platforms, the general conversation is that most content is now created by AI. However, it's very difficult to differentiate between real and artificially generated content.
So, customers who believe they are watching and buying pornography made by real women are also being deceived.
“There are so many of these types of AI accounts. Some of them have disclaimers that their photos have been manipulated by AI, or they'll use hashtag AI. However, some of them don't have that, and the ones that do now have these disclaimers didn't always have them,” said Kohlman.
Statistics show that the majority (63%) of subscribers to sites like OnlyFans are male, which means that men are also the victims. But hold on, this doesn’t outweigh the negative effects AI pimping has on women.
Not even a little bit.
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