I’m a Sex Worker. AI Porn Isn’t Taking My Job

“There are no girls on the internet.” It’s a truism I first encountered online, one of the “rules of the internet,” though I’m not quite sure when or where. It might have been on NeoPets or maybe 4chan. Regardless, the idea stuck with me. I was a girl, or so everyone told me, and I was hanging out online. Was I the only one?

Of course I wasn’t. While certain communities certainly skewed sausage fest, women have always been online. Despite claims otherwise, women helped conceive and build even the earliest iterations of the web. 

In the time since I first encountered Rule 30, I’ve watched the internet mutate, shift from insular, arcane Usenet boards to permeable and addictive social media platforms. No longer do people say there are no girls on the internet - instead, some complain that it’s all girls. It’s all e-girls: Instagram influencers, Twitch streamers, TikTok hotties, OnlyFans stars. Suddenly, the power is with the girls. They’re driving billions of dollars through OnlyFans, e-commerce, ads: the attention economy. 

The men who complain about this hot girl economy conveniently forget that it’s in fact men who own the majority of these companies, who take their cut, make fat profits off the backs of us hot girls. Now there’s a new hypothetical threat: AI hotties.  

Beneath recent predicting and posturing from the tech world about algorithmically-generated content is a desire to cut the human worker out of creative work — especially when it comes to AI porn and sex work. At the same time, something insidious is happening: Real girls are being accused of being generated by AI. Just as Trump condemned any news he personally disliked FAKE NEWS, flesh and blood humans are now labeled “AI generated.” I should know — it happened to me.

Images of AI-generated women are going viral on Twitter from accounts that imply that it’s “so over” for models online, or that humanity is past needing real-life online sex workers now that AI generated images have arrived.  

A real model “takes hours to create generic content,” “has to work hard to stay in shape,” and “only has one look,” Alex Valaitis, who works for a newsletter about AI, tweeted. He compared this with someone who writes prompts for machine learning technology like Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, or Midjourney, who can create “unlimited content,” “tons of diverse models,” and “personalized content for each simp.” 

Born from newly released image generating neural networks of questionable actual intelligence, these girls are algorithmically perfected: blonde, blue eyes, big tits, skinny waist, glowing skin, perfect ass. They squeeze each other, smile coyly at the camera, itty bitty stringy bikinis dimpling their breasts. The only clue to their artificiality are tiny terrifying details: too many teeth, grotesquely warped fingers. 

Who cares? As Vex Ashley tweeted in response: “if you think men are not capable of jerking off to these dystopian m.c escher collages of mediumly hot body parts truly you don’t know men.”

Humans have been creating “fake” imagery to jerk off to for millennia. If you’ve ever closed your eyes and thought of something while orgasming, you’ve participated in this great tradition. AI porn is nothing new. Just as erotic drawings, the printing press, photography, movies, hentai, virtual reality and robo sex dolls have not killed the demand for sex workers, neither will AI generated porn. Sorry. 

Our clientele hire us for many reasons; a large part of the appeal is that we are fellow humans. To be frank, I have no interest in working with a client who’d rather be fucking a robot anyways. 

In January, I was reading the latest 4chan discussion of me — a perennial happening — when I came across a novel insult. Why are we arguing about this AI generated whore? an anonymous post questioned. An image was attached, red lines circling portions of a photograph of me that they had decided was fake.  

I couldn’t help but laugh. It brought me back to similar claims men made about me during my nascent years on the internet; claims that my photos were stolen, because no real girl would really be interested in discussing graphics cards on /v/ or arguing about dubstep on /mu/. These days, it’s easy to verify my reality. I have posts on Instagram with my face predating these AI image generators. I have a Wikipedia entry, I’ve been interviewed, reviewed, and I’ve appeared at IRL events with other real humans. But it is fair to question just how real the internet version of “Liara” is. 

Usually, my photos have been filtered or enhanced in some way, a little skin smoothing here or there, correcting for unflattering lighting. I’ll edit metadata, use false location information so I’m harder to stalk. Does this make me fake? I’m of the opinion that the image corrections I do aren’t overboard; I don’t think everyone needs to see every single pore on my face.

iPhone front-facing cameras could have been designed to make people insecure, the lens warping people’s noses larger, chins smaller, flattening cheekbones. Young people strive to look more like the “beautifying” filters they see themselves in on Snapchat and TikTok, even going under the knife to get that look. At the same time, virtual influencers like Liam Nikuro and Lil Miquela are becoming more commonplace and normalized. Last year, an OnlyFans model  porn star went viral for FaceTuning her face to look like that of a teenager. We’ve already started to redefine the concept of “real.” 

Will these AI cyberbabes take over society? Will large swathes of the male population be permaglued to their screens, jerking it in the blue light of artificial, optimized faces, digital coos filling their barren studio apartments littered with takeout containers in various states of decay and used tissues scattered across the floor, leaving their limbic systems in a permanent state of disarray?

I don’t think so. Humanity has always had portions of the population prone to “deviant” behaviors, drawn to repetitive, addictive “vices.” The internet is just another medium to indulge. I think all the finger pointing at porn is misdirected. This pain stems from capitalism, from the systemic terrors we’re all subjected to on a regular basis. When the world is hell, it’s easier to withdraw to fantasy, be it synthetic opioids or AI generated pussy. Anything can be addictive in the right circumstances.

I’m still a relentless optimist, I still believe love conquers all. I hope we can reclaim the internet, turn it into a beacon of hope and beauty, the beacon that drew me out of my own personal childhood hell, that connected me with friends and lovers, that ultimately saved my life. There is so much fascinating, creative potential to so-called “artificial intelligence.” I don’t think we should write it off entirely. 

That being said, AI needs to be regulated: current forms of neural networks, like most tube sites, are largely fueled by stolen content. We need to take it slow. Now is not the time to move fast and break things. Sex workers and content creators in general need our labor and intellectual property rights protected. Humanity has suffered the consequences of Silicon Valley’s rash greed for too many decades already. 

How do we make these new toys into powerful tools that can benefit all of us? AI has already shown a great deal of potential in assisting with medical diagnosis and making connections across scientific fields. AI could help stabilize power grids and catch corruption. There are certain tasks that computers will naturally be better suited to; of course we should make use of them. 

The important part of navigating this new technology will be protecting sex workers and other content creators. Will our lawmakers be capable of setting aside their biases and protecting the rights of the ever vulnerable hot girls? Only time will tell.