AI & Our Impossibly Horny Decade

8. Sexual Manipulation - Bad-actor Version

There's also a highly speculative bad-actor version of the previous consequence. Would it be possible for a bad actor (e.g. a government) to exploit this system to warp sexual preferences? For instance, could a government that wants to decrease the number of gay individuals in its country identify pornography consumers who were at risk of following urges to explore gay pornography, and manipulate systems to turn them against it? For instance, if it felt like their interest in gay pornography was in hairy, muscular men, to mandate bias against generating the images that would feed those urges?

9. Development of Whole New Sexual Fetishes

Another that's speculative, but you could imagine that, freed from the constraints of reality and equipped with the hyper-stimulating tools of visualization, whole new classes of previously unknown fetishes (to the world!) and niches of content being unearthed. A bit nebulous given the unknown unknowns. But strange and unpredictable things emerge from AI systems all the time. I think it's a near certainty that as these systems advance, they'll produce a type of pornography that's never existed before, and makes a bunch of people super horny.

10. Skyrocketing Catfishing

I'm ending this list on another one that could be majorly important. Expect a rise in people being "catfished" by fake women (and men) who are nothing more than images, videos, and VTubers generated on the computer. Why would a bad actor do this? The scams might not be new — money, blackmail, or "baiting" users to send nude pics of themselves. What's important is that it will become harder and harder to trust that images shared from strangers are authentically "them." As if you could tell right now -- but before long, it could become nearly impossible.

**End-note: Where does that leave us?**

I'll be the first to admit that some of the points above certainly sound like fear-mongering, and the kind of anti-sex, anti-porn, and anti-pleasure hate that has tried to destroy the adult entertainment industry for as long as it's been around. As an unbearably horny woman who personally loves erotica & pornography, that couldn't be further from my position. It is simply that: some of these things are potentially very bad consequences of something that might be inevitably happening, so it probably makes sense to start talking about them now, before we're scrambling to fix things later.

Given what I feel is the urgency around this, I considered whether I wanted to write this essay and find a "mainstream" outlet to pitch it to, but this content is both unquestionably pornographic in nature, and also feels really uncomfortable to discuss in public settings (although I'm open to suggestions of what other communities might find this important and interested in acting on it). But the fact that it's difficult to talk about is part of the reason it's so important that we do start talking.

From where I'm looking, we're standing on a precipice. Perhaps it's the end state of pornography as we once knew it. At the very least, it seems like we're about to experience a fundamental shift in adult entertainment, and society's relationship to it. I tried to maintain as much neutrality as I could in this article. I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a side of me that was excited for certain parts of the perverted riches that are about to arrive -- but there's another side that's terrified.

It's simply my hope that by starting a discussion, we can consider all the implications and figure out how to forge the paths we want, while we still have a chance to decide.