In early November 2023, the Exxxotica Convention took over the New Jersey Convention and Exposition Center in Edison, New Jersey. It’s an opportunity for porn performers like Blake Blossom to interact with her fans in person—a much more intimate way than from behind a computer screen.
Blossom, surrounded mostly by male fans fawning over her, told The Daily Beast that these conventions are increasingly more important as an avenue to engage with fans in an authentic way. The reason: the growing prevalence of artificial intelligence.
The AI boom is creating a minefield for adult performers. Do they embrace it or fight it? Monitor for deepfakes and react when bad actors make content without consent or compensation or accept it as part of the new reality?
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“I feel like I don’t know enough about it and I am worried about what it means for me and my work,” Blossom said.
Deepfake images are progressively getting much more sophisticated and harder to distinguish from reality. That means that for adult film actors AI could limit work opportunities in the future. Blossom said she’s even concerned that consumer-driven AI alternatives could give her physical “enhancements” that she worries could hurt her self confidence.
A performer’s body is their likeness. Their likeness is their income stream. For years, protecting their image has essentially been a game of whack-a-mole. Models have been impersonated online using their image to catfish unsuspecting consumers.
Blake Blossom presents the award for the 2023 Best New Starlet during the 2023 Adult Video News Awards at Resorts World Las Vegas on January 07, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesMeanwhile, there are groups even within the sex work industry that exploited performer likeness for their financial gain. Blossom and other performers who spoke to The Daily Beast said they found that the company pornhint.com made sex dolls of them without their knowledge or consent, and without any financial compensation. Blossom said she has not yet contacted them or sent a cease-and-desist, but added that her “pending trademark will allow me to sue them in the future though.”
Contract Disputes
Major production companies in the porn business quietly introduced contract clauses that allows them to use a performer’s likeness to create AI-generated content without a pre-disclosure warning. Sixteen performers told The Daily Beast that they found such clauses in their contracts. These have included major porn studios like Brazzers, Naughty America, Letsdoeit, and several others.
“Porn stars and porn directors will become redundant with the advent of AI in porn,” former Brazzers director Vic Lagina told The Daily Beast. “From a company’s standpoint, I can see it being easier, cheaper, and more streamlined to create AI porn without the liability that is a concern on traditional porn production shoots.” He added that “concerns about consent” and “about a performer not being of sound mind during production” would be alleviated too.
Unfortunately, much of the time those contracts go unread. This means that performers might not even be aware of how studios can use their likeness in this way. “It’s really standard in our industry to sign your thing [contract] so you can get your money and go home,” performer Alison Rey told The Daily Beast.
“We are not like mainstream performers who have a manager on set,” she added. “Most of us do not have a lawyer on retainer to send these things to get advice. It can be a little bit predatory in that way. A lot of it is filled with legal jargon that an 18- or 19-year-old just won’t understand.”
Performer Penny Barber echoed Rey’s sentiment. Barber said she found such a clause in her contracts twice.
“They can have my AI rights for $2 million but they’re not going to pay me that. I don’t know why I would give a company something so valuable,” Barber told The Daily Beast.
However, in every instance shared with The Daily Beast, production companies removed the clause upon request. Performers asked The Daily Beast not to specify which studios they had these challenges with out of concerns of potential professional repercussions.
Lean In
While it’s not clear how studios would ultimately use one’s image, the precedent is financially treacherous. For years, porn stars have struggled to get royalty payments for their work. It’s industry standard for performers to be paid a one-time fee for a scene.
This is on top of the external pressures performers face. Major banks have closed bank accounts for performers. AI is also an easy and manipulative tool for potentially nefarious users.
In an email shared with The Daily Beast, a photo-processing company called MagicPhoto asked Rey to be an ambassador for the company. According to the email, MagicPhoto allows users to upload photos of any girl and undress them.
“If I’m understanding correctly, you are asking Alison to promote a service where users can create deepfakes of any girl undressed without their consent?” Rey’s representative asked in response to the inquiry. The company spokesperson responded, “Yes.”
The Daily Beast reached out to the company for comment but they did not respond.
Performers otherwise have limited recourse to protect themselves from the existential threat of AI. That means that in some cases performers want to get ahead of nefarious actors who may use their content to undermine them or make them do actions they wouldn’t otherwise consent to.
However, not all are AI-averse. Actress Stephanie Love told The Daily Beast that she said she has already worked with an AI company called Stripper Coin to make her into an AI model.
“It’s already going to happen. I feel like even posting a picture on Instagram someone can take that and make an AI [version of me] out of it now so if I can get paid ahead for it that’s what I am going to do,” Love told The Daily Beast.
Actress Hime Marie also shares that sentiment. “At first, I was not too excited about the idea of AI. The fact basically anyone in the world could duplicate me or deep-fake a video of me saying something abhorrent is concerning,” Marie told The Daily Beast.
“At this point I’m trying to get ahead of it, if I’m not going to do it somebody else will do it,” Marie said, adding “the more I think about it I see it as a blessing in disguise, especially for people like me who are trying to cut back.”
Ultimately, the concerns of the porn business are the same as other creative-leaning professions. AI has been a key driver behind the Writers and Screen Actors Guild strikes. But the challenges for the adult business comes alongside the a slew of other challenges including financial censorship and pre-existing stigma of sex work.
