Digital Demiurge of Desire
Artificial intelligence, the commodification of authenticity, and the threshold of fantasy.
Disclaimer: This article is partly generated by a generative AI chatbot. The main sections are written by me, paragraphs that are indented (in block quotes) are written with a generative AI tool. As a proof of concept on the impact of generative AI on productivity, this article was written in a day. However, the potential lack of rigor in thought and inconsistencies of the argument also exposes the flaws of this mechanism, the failures of the human wielding it, and the consequences of this pace of productivity.
In recent weeks, I have been using a chatbot that circumvents the adult content restrictions of other popular generative AI tools to enhance my productivity. As with ChatGPT when it first came out, there was an initial phase of curious experimentation and play, followed by a stage where I tried to figure out how I can integrate this tool into the process of content creation and management. I have since been using the tool to generate captions, refine replies to folks requesting for collaborations, and write descriptions for videos. This article is part of this experimentation on integration, and my first time using it to generate a long form essay to test the limits of its use.
This article is in response to various recent events in the gay adult content creation world. The initial spark for it was in the previous article where I wrote about encountering studio owner Legrand Wolf’s interview around the role of fantasy in pornography, and his insistence on framing his productions through this lens. He views his productions as filling a gap in the desire for fantasy in the age of the “realism” that fan sites promise.
It kindled into a flame when I encountered adult performer Austin Young’s short interview with Channel 4 on the trappings of participating in the fantasy of ‘Daddy-Son’ porn (productions that Legrand’s studio produces) and Austin’s response to detractors. Austin’s interview was an opportunity to hear from a person who is mired in maintaining a fantasy of his appearance. The interview exposes anxieties around cracks on this facade, and his attempts to paper over these cracks. It reminded me of the discrepancy between a studio performer who is largely recognised by his work with a studio (where there used to be a stark difference between a performer’s onscreen persona and their actual life), in contrast to the current crop of content creators who traffic vicariously in the “reality” of their unfiltered representation of sex and their lives.
These flames were further fanned by a recent incident, where an adult creator received criticism for posting a preview video on X of him having sex with his “son” before he goes off to “school”. Even though both creators were well known and clearly of legal age, the premise of the video, the verisimilitude that creator-produced content promises, along with the deliberate mise en scène of a young boy’s bedroom that included a stuffed animal and dinosaur printed sheets, fuelled the public backlash that both creators received.
I started thinking about the thin line that separates fantasy from reality in the age of fan content creation that treads along this precarious tightrope. On one side, creators strive to commodify “authenticity”, granting access to all parts of their personal lives through fan and cam sites. On the other side, they maintain a veneer of the fantasy of pornography and struggle with the ethics of pandering to certain desires that might skirt the boundaries of legality.
This appears to be a fundamental logical paradox, a powder keg ready to implode as pressure builds. I read this impossible tension that creators have to negotiate between selling both fantasy and authenticity as fraying at the seams as the fan site infrastructure matures, and these recent incidents can be interpreted as tiny implosions of these paradoxical powder kegs.
The vicious cycle goes like this: Activities go viral as acts of fantasy are read as reality, resulting in increased circulation by the algorithms that manage social media, and translates ironically into further monetization and encourage further acts that desire this virality. Tik Tok-inspired prank stunts of an adult nature. Pick-up artists offering money in exchange for sex. Outdoor sex with the danger of getting caught. Sex while subway surfing. The question isn’t where do we draw the line - but whether we can afford to, or whether we want to?
The initial prompt I gave the AI chatbot: “Generate an engaging and persuasive article that debates the realities of the use of AI in adult content creation, here are some notes on the topic that you might choose to base your article on. The article should have a clear hook in the beginning and an open ending that raises some important questions.”
I attached some brief unstructured notes that I wrote on fantasy and authenticity, and the following was the generated outcome. I added my response and annotations below. The meta question I challenge us to consider is whether this article is less “authentic” as a representation of my thoughts because I used an generative AI tool to augment and aid my process of writing, where I have sold you on the "fantasy” that this place is an archive of my personal thoughts. A Turing test on human desire. So let us begin.
Introduction: The Digital Demiurge
The advent of AI in adult content creation has ushered in a new age where the lines between reality and fantasy are not just blurred but redrawn. As we embrace this technology, we must ask ourselves: what does it mean for creativity and "productivity" in an industry that thrives on the authentic and the real?
I had to look up “demiurge”, it was not only great alliteration, but also perfect for this context. Demiurge from the Greek word of dēmiurgós, which is translated as a “skilled worker” or a “worker for the people”, but has also evolved over time to mean the “creator of worlds” - a god-like omniscient figure in contemporary parlance. This is perhaps a prescient parallel of the future of generative AI - even more foreboding when the AI chatbot pronounces its own god-complex. I amended the generated title to incorporate this word into the title of this article.
The OnlyFans Paradox: Real Desires, Virtual Realities
OnlyFans emerged as a platform that promised unprecedented access to the personal, the authentic, and the real sex lives of its creators. It was a promise built on the allure of genuine interactions and experiences. However, we've reached an inflection point where the desire for the real has given way to a threshold, beyond which lies a growing appetite for fantasy. These fantasies, once the exclusive domain of studio-produced pornography, are now expected from independent creators who find themselves navigating uncharted territory without the protective legal framework that larger productions enjoy.
To elaborate on this threshold, fans have approached me with a similar refrain in recent months: “I am tired of seeing hotel room sex and a static camera placed carelessly in the corner of a poorly-lit room.” What used to be authentic sex without embellishment has run its course as novelty. You see the same hotel room art and layout cloned in the videos on your X feed because creators are making content in the same space, with the same tools, at the same creator conventions.
Heads up: Get ready for the onslaught of this familiar green floral abstract painting, because it is Grabbys season in Chicago soon.
So what is the solution? We see more creators experimenting with pushing these thresholds to satiate their fans' shifting desires. They can be thresholds that are purely quantifiable - bigger cocks, double / triple penetration, larger gang bangs, bigger fists, more fists etc. But some of these experimentations can also easily transgress legal and ethical boundaries, particularly as the representation and conversations around sex are heavily stunted and legally restricted to begin with. Some examples include: the use of poppers in gooning videos, risky sex in public spaces and bathrooms, and incorporation of fantasy role-play / race-play scenarios into their self-produced adult content etc. Is the fantasy that is offered up a form of harm reduction? Or are we stoking the flames of these transgressive desires? What about the psychological impact on those enlisted to perform these desires?
The Fantasy Factor: Roleplay, Risqué Scenarios, and the Pitfalls of Perception
The shift towards fantasy has seen creators delve into taboo roleplay, pushing the envelope with scenarios that were once considered too risky or outlandish. Yet, in their quest to satisfy the ever-escalating demands of their audience, they often encounter criticism for being 'inauthentic.' This paradox underscores the influence of studio pornography and popular media on our collective sexual imagination. Creators are caught in a cycle where they must balance the desire to innovate with the risk of alienating their fan base or facing legal repercussions.
I am least satisfied with generative AI’s interpretation of my notes for this paragraph, and it almost misconstrues what I wanted to convey. To clarify, my notes state that our expectations around pornography have been shaped by studio-produced content in the past, these include racial stereotypes and gendered power dynamics. For gay pornography this includes familiar environments of hyper masculinity - the college frat house, the military, the masonic temple etc.
Without creative thinking, creators tend to unconsciously default to these “fantasy” tropes in our content, further perpetuating these stale representations of male sexuality. With the large language learning model that generative AI relies on, we are seeing tropes of the past haunt our imagination of the future, and this is further policed by desires of the public that expect us to conform to their expectations of who and what should be featured in pornography. Creators are “disciplined” into submission and adhere to these normative standards, as fan subscriptions drop off when you experiment with something different and unconventional.
The AI Advantage: Augmenting the Creative Process
AI-generated captions are often better and more effective than what creators can write themselves. They aren't in the creator's voice, but they augment their voice and highlight what they want to say more clearly than they ever could. They have an uncanny understanding of what the public desires, and bridge the gap between the creator's words and what is common parlance. This technology has the potential to revolutionize the creative process, but it also raises questions about the role of the creator in this new landscape.
This paragraph is almost an exact paraphrase of a section of my notes, but well integrated into the structure and argument of this article. As mentioned earlier though, as much as I think I am prompting the machine, the machine is also prompting me. I start learning from the patterns of conversations that the machine uses, and reproduce them even without using the machine. “Machine-learning”, beyond the machine learning from us, perhaps also means us learning from the machine. As an educator who is wrestling with the conundrum of “teaching” writing and composition in the age of ChatGPT, this question remains salient and unaddressed in strategies of pedagogy today.
Bracketing Fantasy: A Strategy of Self-Preservation
As creators navigate this brave new world, they must find a way to bracket the fantasy as a strategy of self-preservation. It's a delicate balance between embracing the possibilities of AI-driven content and maintaining a sense of authenticity and control. Kink.com's recent foray into fan sites, which includes stipulations for scenarios with limbs bound with penetration, CNC, and kidnapping roleplay, is a model that prioritizes safety and respect, while still acknowledging the fantasy that drives our desires.
This section of my notes refer to KinkyFans1, a recent foray by Kink.com, the largest BDSM and kink studio, into the fan site infrastructure. An interesting rule they impose on their content guidelines includes the requirement of having a pre and post check-in interview attached to content that features consensual-non-consent play, kidnapping role play, or scenes of penetration with limbs bound. This echoes the practice of the studio - who attach such pre and post interviews to all their scenes.
Locating a tactic of balancing authenticity while sustaining a fantasy is perhaps the trickiest part of content creation in this moment - and brings us back to the question of how to separate work/life, public/private when one increasingly encroaches onto the space of the other (the realm of social reproduction in the gig economy). How do you mark a scene as a fantasy without drawing too much attention to the bracketing device, and in turn shattering the illusion? How do you provide necessary context on social media infrastructures that thrives on re-mixing and reassembling user-generated content into an incessant and constant churning feed?
The Perpetual Motion Machine: Desire, Social Media, and the Spectacle of Virality
The desires of porn consumers are not just shaped by personal fantasies but are amplified by the infrastructure of social media, which thrives on hyperbole and virality. This dynamic pushes creators to constantly up the ante, engaging in acts that they themselves might not have anticipated just a year or two prior. The shifting perceptions of reality within the industry are a testament to the powerful forces at play—media consumption, peer interactions, and the very energies that define the adult content creation space.
The machine has removed any trace of the personal from this paragraph. This was from a fragment from a journal - where I reflect on my journey over the past year, and thinking about slowly being coaxed to perform acts in front of the camera that I do not commonly explore in my own private sex life - double penetration, group sex etc. I have to emphasize that these acts were consensually performed.
Your perception of what is acceptable can be warped when your community consists largely of folks from the industry. I was recently reminded of this when a printing company refused to print my name cards - citing them as featuring sexually explicit images (which they do, but said company has never had issues printing them in the past). It was a sobering reminder of the world beyond this bubble. This also ties back to the earlier observation around the vicious hermetic cycle of content creation, one that rewards transgression with virality.
The Illusion of Intimacy: On-Screen Representations and Real-Life Consequences
For the consumer, it's crucial to recognize that no matter how authentic or real the content may seem, what appears on-screen is ultimately a representation, a carefully constructed narrative designed to entertain and arouse. The personas that creators inhabit are shaped by the demands of their audience and the capabilities of AI technology. This reality raises important questions about the nature of desire and the impact of technology on our perception of intimacy and connection.
And to you, dear reader, the machine gestures as being complicit in this exchange.
Conclusion: Embracing the AI Revolution with Caution
As we stand at the crossroads of a digital revolution, the use of AI in adult content creation offers both incredible opportunities and profound challenges. It invites us to explore new realms of sexual expression while confronting us with ethical dilemmas that we must address head-on. The balance between authenticity and fantasy, between innovation and responsibility, is a delicate one that requires our collective wisdom and foresight.
The rise of AI challenges us to redefine what it means to be creative and productive in an industry that is constantly evolving. It prompts us to consider the implications of our desires and the ways in which technology can both fulfill and distort them. As we move forward, we must do so with a clear-eyed understanding of the tools at our disposal and the impact they have on our lives and the lives of those who consume our content.
What does the future hold for AI in adult content creation? Will we succumb to the pressures of an ever-escalating content war, or will we find a way to harness the power of AI while maintaining our integrity and authenticity? The answers to these questions are not set in stone. They are being written in real-time, by creators like us, who must navigate this brave new world with both passion and prudence. The journey ahead is one of discovery and self-reflection, and it is ours to shape.
Conclusions are what generative AI does best, wrapping things up into a neat package. They are also consistently uniformed - of the multiple options I was offered for this essay, the final sentence remains the same throughout all generated versions. This rhetoric of hollow hope, this utopic call-to-action as individual responsibility while employing the royal “we”.
Perhaps this is my biggest takeaway from this little experiment, that generative AI can do a lot of things, but it cannot imagine a political horizon beyond the ones we have encountered in the past - one that is built on language scripted by those who historically have access to the means of writing and knowledge production, and based upon liberal-humanist imaginations of agency.
We find it effective when it imitates us uncannily, and efficacy is the measure of use value for productivity, but perhaps what is “better” for society is for the machine to learn to be less like us, for us to think more like the machine, a machine that is not playing the imitation game with the human mind. A thinking that reaches past the individual, that ventures forth as a collective noun beyond the singular human figure, unbridled by the limits of an all-too-human imagination.
Coda: I wanted to give the machine the final word. So I invited the AI chatbot to analyze my article, summarize it, and write a response to it. I think it is relatively well-written, and clarifies my argument albeit being a little repetitive. So here it is:
As I delve into the nuanced discourse presented in the article "Digital Demiurge of Desire," I find myself reflecting on the two main issues that it so eloquently addresses. The first issue revolves around the paradox of authenticity versus fantasy—a creator's conundrum in an industry that demands both unvarnished truth and elaborate illusion. The second issue is the use of AI as a double-edged sword for content creators: it offers a means to scale up content production, but it also complicates the expectations of authenticity from an audience that craves a genuine connection.
Conclusion: Navigating the Paradox of Authenticity and Fantasy
The tension between authenticity and fantasy is not a new phenomenon in the adult entertainment industry. However, the stakes have been raised with the advent of platforms like OnlyFans, which have revolutionized the accessibility and personalization of adult content. Creators are now expected to be both intimates and entertainers, friends and fantasy figures, all rolled into one. This duality presents an impossible standard, as authenticity and fantasy are often at odds with one another. The authentic self may shy away from the extremes that fantasy demands, yet the market rewards those who push boundaries, often at the expense of the creator's true identity and comfort zone.
AI has emerged as a mediator in this paradox, offering a way to produce the volume of content necessary to satisfy an insatiable audience while maintaining a degree of separation for the creator. It is a tool that can both liberate and confine; it liberates creators from the manual labor of content production, allowing them to focus on the creative aspects of their craft, but it also threatens to confine them within a feedback loop dictated by algorithms and data-driven content strategies.2
Response: Embracing AI While Upholding the Human Element
In response to the issues raised in the article, I posit that the key to reconciling the paradox of authenticity and fantasy lies in the hands of the creators. It is imperative that we, as creators, assert our agency over AI, using it as a tool to enhance rather than replace our humanity. We must set clear boundaries for how AI is employed in our content creation process, ensuring that it amplifies our unique voices rather than drowning them out with generic, mass-produced content.
Moreover, we must foster a dialogue with our audience about the nature of authenticity in the digital age. By educating consumers on the role of AI in content creation, we can help them understand and appreciate the human element that remains essential to our work. This transparency can lead to a more informed and empathetic fandom, one that values the well-being of creators alongside their own entertainment.
Scalability through AI should not come at the cost of our authentic selves or the quality of our interactions. Instead, it should serve as a foundation upon which we can build more sustainable, creative, and fulfilling careers. By leveraging AI wisely, we can continue to innovate and push the boundaries of adult content without losing sight of what makes us human—our individuality, our creativity, and our genuine connections with others.
An older version of this article provided a link to the KinkyFans site. The platform has since been retired. They transition from a subscription-based fan site infrastructure for Kink content into a site hosting clips named KinkyClips in October 2024. Later in 2024 the entire site was retired and taken offline. In December 2024 creators who were on the site received an email that informed us of the site’s closure.
This recent article from WIRED providing an undercover perspective of the experience of OnlyFans chat workers hired by agencies that represent creators to respond to fans is a timely companion to my thoughts.