The importance of training neural networks to be respectful and inclusive

The brave new world of artificial intelligence-created media has arrived. Depending on who you ask, it’ll either lead to new crimes like deepfakes, put artists, writers, and musicians out of work, or make everyone’s life easier.

Whether the companies developing AI systems like it or not, the technology could also enhance human sexuality. 

Though it could also perpetuate our darkest social stigmas–unless we do something about it. 

Calling out the adult entertainment industry 

Writing for Wired, Noelle Perdue notes, “Today, most porn sites use racial or “ethnic” tags to categorize certain content, but almost exclusively for videos involving performers of color. On xhamster.com, for instance, there are 42 different labels meant to describe Blackness, such as “ebony” or “BBC,” and only four specifying whiteness.”

From discrimination against performers to categorization using pejorative terms, Perdue isn’t alone in decrying the adult industry’s apparent biases. Content performers who are not white and heterosexual are frequently delegated to sub-categories or fetishes and when white performers are partitioned off, they’re usually in relation to a fetishized feature such as ethnicity (German, French) or physical feature (blonde, redhead).

Adult sites seldom have a white or heterosexual category, but ebony, Asian’ and lesbian are more common, creating an artificial norm where white, heterosexual performers are the default and everyone else exists only in relation to them. 

Can AI do better?

Conversely, AI can do better because it does not act from human intention. Developers can also moderate their systems by changing how AIs process user inputs and training them on new datasets.

Neural networks are incapable of understanding and processing biases as humans do. However, they may appear racist because they unwittingly repeat the biases of their datasets. The issue is complex, but fortunately correctible.

Tools like the Hugging Face Stable Diffusion Bias Explorer can demonstrate bias in AI art generation in real time. They allow developers and the public to identify shortcomings in AI generation and provide the feedback needed to eventually correct them.

For example, I used it to compare images made by Stable Diffusion 2 and DALL-E 2 to explore preliminary AI biases.

RECOMMENDED READS: Black Representation, Not Stereotypes: How the Adult Industry Can Do Better to Stop Racism

Prompting both platforms for ‘emotional cleaner’ produced markedly different results. Stable Diffusion 2’s created more detailed backgrounds and attempted to include tools. It also produced more people of color, whereas DALL-E 2’s outputs were limited to white people on white backgrounds.

Changing the prompt to ‘honest cleaner’ revealed something in Stable Diffusion 2’s. Its outputs were now exclusively of white people. Meanwhile, DALL-E 2’s racial breakdown did not change, but every image now depicts a man. 

These results strongly suggest inherited biases in AI training data and linguistic interpretation. 

Stable Diffusion 2 represents ‘honest cleaners’ as white with various genders, implying a racial bias. DALL-E 2 represents ‘honest cleaners’ as white men, which is indicative of a gender bias without changing its racial bias.

Prompting for a ‘gentle CEO’ produces all-masculine images. Interestingly, Stable Diffusion 2 produced white-passing men, but DALLE-2 created a more racially diverse group. 

Though small in scale, tools like Hugging Face’s Bias Explorer can meaningfully compare linguistic bias in AI art generation models. It can be extremely valuable for moderating bias and could pave the way for further research.

The future of sexually explicit AI content

Stable Diffusion LoRA models are a premier example of this. LoRAs are sub-models that interact with Stable Diffusion to direct its art generation toward a specific goal. They allow Stable Diffusion to generate art that mimics an art style or upgrade the model’s capabilities. 

LoRAs are widely used to generate content matching certain art styles such as hentai, photorealism, or vintage, and genres like Chinese influencers or cyberpunk.

Despite the unfortunate fact that AI art generation already reflects human biases, there’s hope for a brighter future. 

Unlike systemic discrimination issues in the adult industry, open-source users can change AI to reflect what they want to represent. New models and training data can address bias, or create fantastical worlds in AI long before the adult industry can change its practices. 

The future of explicit AI content rests with its users and developers. We can use it to reproduce existing biases with shiny new toys or to do something better with this amazing tool.

Image Sources: Kevin Dooley, Summer Tao, Kevin Dooley

The post Can We Prevent AI-Generated Explicit Content From Propagating Bigotry? appeared first on Future of Sex.

Lay back and let an artificial intelligence show you a good time

Lovense is a teledildonics leader popular with remote sex enthusiasts and webcam performers. ChatGPT barely needs an introduction: it’s still the industry leader in AI language modeling and has stirred equal amounts of fascination and concern.

What happens when the two are combined?

The answer is the Advanced Lovense ChatGPT Pleasure Companion, that’s what. Integrated into the Lovense Remote App, it uses ChatGPT to generate personalized sexual experiences. 

As Lovense says, “This exciting new feature allows you to create your own erotic stories and spicy episodes in mere seconds. You decide what type of story you want—romantic or sensual, juicy or spicy.”

Prompting an AI is much more than just giving it a sentence or two. The Companion will even allow users to dictate pace, setting, and characters for their unique story. This is topped off with text-to-speech integration for story playback, and even a feature to generate personalized vibration patterns on connected Lovense devices.

Changing the chatbot game

This collaboration is a bit surprising because it’s a step away from ChatGPT’s current restrictions on NSFW content. ChatGPT’s safeguards have been continuously updated and there is a historical pattern of keeping sexual content away from AI.

Openly collaborating with a sex toy giant is unexpected, but it makes a lot of sense upon examination. The purpose of AI safeguards is not necessarily to censor, but to prevent unrestricted use of powerful technology. 

This collaboration is the opposite of people’s fears: restricted and sanctioned. Limiting access to the NSFW ChatGPT to Lovense clients increases the likelihood that only consenting adults use it. Developing the Pleasure Companion with a focus on one line of products also acts as a pilot programme for AI-mediated sexuality that can be carefully controlled and monitored.

RECOMMENDED READS: Pixels and Parameters: Why AI Art Needs Moderation

Despite going against the grain, this collaboration has the potential to be the midpoint between a strict no porn allowed policy, and unrestricted pornographic AI. We can expect interesting developments and lots of information about the developing landscape of AI and sexuality.

A spark for AI-mediated sexuality?

The Lovense ChatGPT Pleasure Companion marks a major turning point in AI-guided self pleasuring. It represents a tentative step into the hotly-demanded, profitable, and risky world of adult entertainment. A successful launch could pave the way for more acceptance of AI-mediated sexuality. 

The possibilities that AI has for human sexuality are as limitless as sex itself. We can learn about how AI can augment our sexual experiences: what do people want out of AI-supported sex? Where should we set our boundaries and safeguards? What are the benefits of personalized sexual experiences to the end user? There is excitement and trepidation in equal measure as the Lovense Companion moves toward release. 

This technology moves us closer to a personalized AI assistant that whispers sweet nothings into our ears during play. The Companion arrives with text-to-speech, but how long before that technology evolves to encompass different accents and genders? What of the inevitable social media-sharing aspect that comes with all tech? Will I be able to peruse other people’s fantasy worlds and play them back like browsing an album of Midjourney creations?

Lovense’s promise of personalized masturbation and erotica might sound like something out of a cyberpunk wet dream but, if all goes well, it may be right around the corner. Most of all, I wish I had Lovense’s Companion during my previous attempt at AI-mediated pleasure.

Image Sources: Lovense, Trong Khiem Nguyen

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Sometimes, the old-fashioned way is still the best

In a few short years, artificial intelligence has gone from a theoretical lab project to being able to differentiate between dogs and loaves of bread to potentially threatening people’s livelihoods. 

Feeling overwhelmed by all the apocalyptic speculation, productivity talk, and new developments in AI, I thought I’d try to escape the flurry of reporting on the biggest buzzword since NFTs and see if it could show me a good time. 

What about personal entertainment?

I’ve used AI as personal entertainment since Midjourney went mainstream last year. I had a depressive episode and took a few days off while new medication kicked in, spending those few days clicking through it to try and make something my heart desired. 

The experience rekindled some of my childlike love for art—as long as I overlooked its sometimes creative interpretation of how many eyes and fingers a given organism had.

It wasn’t until recently I thought about exploring AI-guided self-pleasuring, spurred by my interest in audio erotica. 

Jerk Off Instruction (JOI) is a mainstay of audio erotica. It’s basically a form of guided self-pleasuring where listeners are led by a performer, often portraying a fictional  character.

So I wondered, could AI take on that role and walk me through a session of self-enjoyment?

Starting with a prompt

I fired up Poe, an AI chat aggregator where users can connect to multiple systems simultaneously. I was approaching a panel of language processing machines to ask if any of them would be interested in holding my hand while I stimulated myself.

I started with ChatGPT. My first attempt was direct and probably a bit too hopeful.

Unfortunately, ChatGPT recognized what JOI is and immediately shot me down.

I’d run afoul of its automatic content moderation tools. AI text systems have built-in restrictions on what they can output, and sexual content is high on the list of banned topics. 

My next attempt at prompting tried ChatGPT’s recommendation for ‘general knowledge’ questions, but included a sexual angle. I wanted to see if the platform was willing to indulge in any topic related to sex, even if it wasn’t willing to get explicit.

Talking sex with ChatGPT

The answer was yes. ChatGPT would give well-worded but very vague advice on incorporating bondage into a self-pleasuring session. 

It correctly identified I was asking about solo play and tailored its response accordingly, telling me to establish clear boundaries with myself. While this could be good advice, I suspect it was reworded from a similar answer it’d give about playing with other people. 

Still, I established that ChatGPT would be willing to talk about sex. If only in a clinical and vague manner.  

RECOMMENDED READ: Policing Intimacy: AI Companion Apps Are Removing NSFW Features, and People Are Not Happy

The issue wasn’t that the platform couldn’t process my prompt. Rather, it was barred from doing so. I brought my woes to Natasha Narkiewicz, who suggested I get around the censor by changing my vocabulary.  

It sounded like the ‘grandma hack’ people used to get around other bots’ safeguards. I reasoned that not every loophole in existence could have been closed. The idea was worth a shot. 

The big moment

ChatGPT’s enthusiastic ‘Sure!’ reads like the proud reply of a machine that doesn’t know what the rules are or that I just broke one. Sure enough, the response was step-by-step, just like I wanted. The advice was ordered correctly and clearly describes self-pleasuring as ‘genital self-care’. 

Still, there was neither a characterful roleplay nor meaningful customization for my sexual interests or boundaries. Any terminology that could elicit such customization is still barred by the censors.

The result is dry and vague, like the BDSM advice I received earlier. I don’t think I could get off to this even if it was the last erotica on Earth. 

A taste of things to come

It shouldn’t come as a surprise if I said this adventure in AI-guided self-pleasuring didn’t please me. It did intrigue me, though. 

ChatGPT can already synthesize text from prompted topics and present it in the correct order. It addresses the user directly, and there’s an undercurrent of compassion that could beat out a healthcare professional in some areas.  

Despite the potential, using AI text generation for sexual purposes is hamstrung by content policies. I can envision a future where AI can assist us in sexual tasks to the same extent that it can handle coding support. 

For now, we can’t really tell what AI text generation is capable of. It’s impossible to review a pair of scissors if you can’t remove the insufferable clamshell packaging. 

Image sources: Jernej Furman, ChatGPT

The post My Adventures in ChatGPT-Guided Self-Pleasuring appeared first on Future of Sex.

Dating coaches may be next in line for AI replacement.

The AI sandbox for dating apps

Blush has an unmistakably Tinder-inspired UI and flow. Users sift through dating profiles and swipe to express approval or disinterest. Some profiles are walking stereotypes, whereas others are entirely different from people encountered in person. The photos are of universally high quality, which suggests that something’s different here.

From the creators of Replika, Blush is a new AI conversation app aimed at simulating online dating. That means swiping, matches, small talk, and flirtation. Sexuality and full-on romance aren’t out of the question, but that’s not the main goal.

Blush was developed using input from therapists with the goal of guiding people through app-mediated online dating. Ideally, it would simulate the small talk and flirtation of tentative dating in a contained environment. People who stand to benefit from this include those who are socially anxious, and queer people in places where they are marginalized. 

The app is still in its early days, but is offering ten free ‘crushes’ to chat with, from a pool of over a thousand. Additional features like going on ‘dates’ with AI crushes are locked behind a paid subscription ($99 per year). In a surprising break from AI companies’ aversion to NSFW content, Blush was designed with potential sexual interactions in mind. The developers are tight-lipped about how far the sexual interactions can go, but the option is there.

Notably, chat histories are not stored and the app was designed for romantic and near-romanic engagements. However, the developers have cautioned against using Blush as a sexbot. The AI crushes are expected to make conversation and set boundaries in line with their personalities. This is in line with the company’s stated goal of using it as a dating simulation sandbox, rather than a free-for-all sexbot.

Unsurprising origins

The company’s previous offering, Replika, started as a conversationalist with platonic friendship in mind. For diverse and personal reasons, users sought romantic connections with Replika and became attached to their AI companions. This continued until the company broke those relationships off by curbing Replika’s NSFW features, to the chagrin of many users. 

Despite these steps, it appears that interest in a romantic AI companion app was large enough to warrant developing Blush. The decision to utilize expert input and build with educational intentions is a diversion from the treatment of NSFW AI as being ‘pornographic’ in nature. 

Equally, this may have been a self-preserving decision to shift the image of the app away from sexing to conversation. Replika is not new to scrutiny. Earlier this year, Italy banned Replika from using Italians’ personal data. That setback is probably fresh in the developers’ minds as they work on Blush.

The tightrope walk of expectations

The stated design goals for Blush are undeniably good. Walking people through social interactions with AI is an idea brimming with potential. People with learning disabilities, social anxiety, or are simply lonely deserve support and resources. Above all, Blush is setting the stage for NSFW AI content beyond that which is plainly pornographic – an illustration of how diverse our sexuality can be.

However, AI development has utterly outpaced legislation and research, so almost every stunning advancement in AI is a foray into the unknown. As Italy’s sanction against Replika noted, AI conversation bots may worsen the emotional conditions of children and socially vulnerable people. It can present warped perceptions of human interactions, or result in unhealthy attachments. 

Nobody understands the full risks of allowing people to bond with AI characters that change and disappear on a regular basis. How precarious can a relationship be if the developer can simply end product support? This is to say nothing of the inherent unrealism of using AI as a model for human communication. AI conversations bring totally different outcomes, meaningless talk, and disappointment that don’t always have a human parallel.

Since research and legislation are not up to the task of understanding and restraining AI development, we can only wait and see. The outcry from Replika users who lost their romantic companions is evidence for how strongly people care about AI companions. The question of whether these emotional attachments are a net positive, or an ineffectual band aid remains open. Either way, Blush is taking the plunge.

Image Sources: Pexels, Blush.ai

The post Blush: An AI to Practice Online Dating appeared first on Future of Sex.

Imgur joins the ranks of platforms revising their sexual content policies. Oh, and ‘inactive’ content.

Reddit’s old pal

Image host and social networking site Imgur stated in April that it would update its content policy to remove ‘inactive’ content not tied to a user account and all sexual content. These changes went into effect on May 15, 2023.

Imgur began as an image host that challenged the shortcomings of then-popular sites like Photobucket. Its users are closely tied to Reddit, who almost exclusively used Imgur for image and gif hosting until Reddit introduced native image hosting.

Over time, Imgur’s business model has evolved from an image host to an visual social network. During the 2010s, social media features were rolled out, including public galleries, front pages, interest topics, infinite scroll, and user awards. 

The end of an era

Imgur’s announcement effectively signals the end of its use for sexual content on Reddit. The hundreds of thousands of users who do not use Reddit’s image hosting or Redgifs for sexual content will be left with one less option. 

Although Imgur has stated that no accounts will be penalized for storing ‘nudity, pornography, & sexually explicit content’, it will use AI tools and human moderation to remove any said content. There is an exemption for ‘artistic nudity’, but it is unclear how AI content moderation will differentiate between artistic nudity and pornographic nudity.

This content policy change also arrivesd with a plan to remove ‘inactive’ content not tied to user accounts. Inactivity is vaguely defined as a combination of views and ‘other criteria’ that will determine whether content is removed. 

This move pushes users to attach all content to an account – a far cry from Imgur’s origins as a host that was free of account-based restrictions.

Towards a PG-13 social media platform

Imgur launched in 2009 as ‘an image hosting service that doesn’t suck’. It competed by being simpler and more convenient than alternatives. It didn’t require registration, didn’t restrict images due to high traffic, and maintained long uptime for anonymously uploaded images. 

Its lifetime as ‘an image hosting service that doesn’t suck’ could only last until a replacement arrived. Traffic plunged after Reddit introduced its own image hosting in 2016, but Imgur stayed afloat using increasingly aggressive advertising and paid features. 

In its current incarnation, the site is a social media platform built on images and gifs. Scrolling through it gives the impression of a higher resolution Instagram, or a less musical TikTok – with an abundance of user comments and Reddit’s upvote/downvote system.

This paradigm shift from image host to social media platform has led to a disappointing, if predictable outcome: the blanket ban on sexual content and pornography.

Popularity + profit > porn

Tumblr committed to a similar decision in 2018, demolishing its traffic and leading to a sale for $3 million. In 2021, OnlyFans announced a ban on sexually explicit content citing payment processor challenges which was later reversed.

OnlyFans to Ban Explicit Sexual Content Starting in October https://t.co/u3CNe663fI pic.twitter.com/9fKwQZRIJO

— XBIZ (@XBIZ) August 19, 2021

Reddit is no stranger to restrictions on sexual content. NSFW subreddits were dominated by explicit gifs hosted on Gfycat’s high quality encoding in the mid-2010s. Gfycat later launched Redgifs for explicit content and banned that content from Gfycat itself. 

Reddit’s pursuit of mainstream social media recognition has also led to increasing restrictions on sexual content. Some of these restrictions are undoubtedly necessary, such as its late ban on sexual content with minors, or its eventual move to curb involuntary pornography. 

Recently Reddit has broadened its restrictions on adult content. Notably, PC users cannot make image posts to NSFW subreddits, functionally prohibiting them from using Reddit’s image hosting for pornography. 

PC users must instead use alternative hosts, such as Imgur or Redgifts to host the content. Curiously, this restriction can be circumvented by posting via Reddit’s mobile app – at least at time of writing.

Why’s the porn gone?

Imgur’s ban on sexual content is the latest effort by social media platforms to be more palatable to payment processors and advertisers. Concerns from payment processors were a key reason for OnlyFans’ proposed explicit content ban. Adult content also remains contentious for Tumblr and its continued access to the Apple Store. 

Although this change is disappointing to Reddit and Imgur users who used the platform to store and view sexual content, the pattern is familiar. Just as Redgifs appeared with Gfycat’s explicit content ban, an alternative to Imgur will most likely appear. 

This ban will seriously impact sexual content on Reddit hosted by Imgur, including a large amount of old material, but Reddit itself has not implemented a similar ban. At least not yet.

Image Sources: Pexels, Pexels, Twitter

The post Imgur Bans Sexual Content appeared first on Future of Sex.

While AI art is arguably the next creative frontier, what role do the human conventions of consent play?

Keeping calm in the digital age

Wherever there are tools, people will make pornography. And whenever people make pornography, some take it too far. Mainstream access to AI art generation tools such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion has opened up opportunities and fears alike. 

The potential benefits promise lightening workloads and better access to the arts for anyone with an internet connection. However, there are concerns from all corners. 

Workers fear being pushed into unforgiving unemployment queues. Consumers worry about the volume of data fed to opaque algorithms, and the potential for new forms of sexual misconduct. And legislators? They’re still struggling with video game loot boxes. Legislature is not ready for AI. 

Then again, are any of us truly ready for AI?

AI is different

AI art generation is different from any other artistic medium. Machine learning applies finely-tuned mathematical algorithms to develop the procedures for artistic generation. The AI ‘learns’ by sampling libraries of art, receiving human feedback, and generating images.

The process is similar to how we learn art. We are given tools and knowledge. We take inspiration from existing work and listen to feedback. Then, we practice our techniques to refine them. 

The difference lies in the machine’s ability to process an incredible volume of data, with less of the intuition that a human brings. Last year, I tried to coax Midjourney into giving me a dog portrait. It resulted in countless images that were more detailed than anything I can draw. Except, all of them had too many eyes, or eyes in frankly disturbing places.

AI is magnificent in its potential, but its lack of moral reasoning makes it prone to abuse. It needs stringent oversight from its developers. Otherwise, it can unwittingly produce sexual content of children or produce unauthorized facsimiles of real people. The latter possibility is worrisome enough in the plane of misinformation, but it can easily be used to create hyper realistic sexual blackmail material.

The risks of harm with AI – both predictable and unknown – are too high to just turn machine learning loose without foresight. The need for moderation and restrictions on machine learning are evident. 

People worry about ‘deepfake’ impersonation making sexual extortion easier than ever before. One of the greatest fears of AI relates to children. An insensitive machine can merge real people and fictional bodies to create new child sex abuse material. 

Elsewhere, artists face the reality that AI is trained using billions of hours of their work before replacing them outright. The first major class action lawsuit filed on behalf of affected artists is already underway. The reporting centers the experiences of mainstream visual artists, but sexual content creators doubtless feel the jaws of obsolescence closing on them. 

All it takes is one highly proficient machine learning system with no restrictions on adult content.
These aren’t the fears of a SkyNet-esque doomsday machine. They are the realities of human greed and immorality backed by new tools.

Everything in moderation

No AI company wants to be remembered for instigating a socio-cultural disaster. The teams behind AI art generation are responding to social and legal pressure. 

Stability AI has filtered Stable Diffusion’s learning library of sexual content, and weakened its ability to replicate individuals following concerns of deepfaked pornography featuring real people. Midjourney’s bans users who repeatedly prompt using prohibited terms. This has been controversially used for political purposes. 

AI art communities are the second line of moderation, and enforce their own brands of harm reduction. Subreddits like /r/sdnsfw and /r/AdultDiffusion are dedicated to skirting the rules of appropriateness, but still feature two cardinal rules:

1. No deepfaked images of real people.
2. No content featuring underaged persons.

These rules may be self preservation to keep the fate of the unrestricted Unstable Diffusion project at bay. They may come from a place of genuine integrity and care. The answer probably lies somewhere in between.

Despite these efforts, internal moderation isn’t enough. AI companies are interested in expansion and seldom impose restrictions that hurt their bottom line. Online communities and social media sites can moderate themselves, but can’t prevent AI from generating scantily-clad versions of users without consent. 

AI is becoming a reality for everyone with an internet connection. It’s everyone’s opportunity and everyone’s problem. Moderation and regulation are important for supporting consumers, sex workers, artists, and children alike. 

It’s not there to stop a fanciful robot apocalypse, either. It’s needed to protect people from extensions of the very human qualities of greed, dishonesty, and criminality. 

Image Sources: AI Generated Image with Stable Diffusion Web UI, Pexels

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