Penalty levied for failing to remove CSAM and NCM videos

Aylo Group Ltd, owner of the popular explicit video sharing site, PornHub, agreed to pay the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the state of Utah a five million dollar fine. According to an FTC press release, Aylo deceived “users by doing little to block tens of thousands of videos and photos featuring child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and nonconsensual material (NCM) despite claiming that this content was “strictly prohibited.’’’

The substantial fine comes on the heels of a 2020 New York Times article exposing the company’s failure to control PornHub’s content. As another New York Times piece noted, this caused Mastercard and Visa to cut ties with Aylo, which, even after Aylo started requiring content uploaders and performers to provide proof of consent and of legal age.

J’Accuse!

The FTC press release also accused Aylo of misleading those very same content providers, writing that it “told its models that they could ‘trust that their personal data remains secure’ yet failed to use standard security measures to protect the data.” 

But Aylo’s problems didn’t stop there. The FTC said the company was also unable or unwilling to block anyone attempting to upload CSAM videos, instead only keeping them from circumventing the ban by setting up other accounts using the username or email address.

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Not only that, but Aylo was caught in a lie when it claimed it had begun digitally marking potentially under-age content to alert them should the producer try to resubmit it to any of PornHub’s other sites—but the FTC pointed out this wasn’t effectively implemented for four years, from 2017 to 2021, resulting in what could be as many as a hundred CSAM videos being re-uploaded.

We promise, really—

In response, Aylo told TechCrunch it would be redoubling its self-policing efforts, pledging to “reaffirms [its] efforts to prevent the publication of CSAM and NCM.”

However, though accepting the judgment and fine, Aylo seems resistant to its intent, adding “The resolution reached involved enhancements to existing measures but did not introduce any new substantive requirements that were not either already in place or in progress”—apparently unaware of how many times it failed to fulfill any of its previous promises.

By admitting guilt, along with paying the five million dollar fine, Aylo agreed to verify the content and legal identity of anyone appearing in content submitted to PornHub or its other adult platforms; establish new, more stringent ways to halt the spread of underage and/or nonconsensual materials to any of its sites; permanently delete any CSAM and NCM still in its systems.

Porn needs help

Though their efforts might end up driving adult content viewers to unblocking sites, the age-verification laws sweeping the United States and other countries have certainly hit adult platforms where it hurts them the worst: their bank accounts.

Case in point: Anthony Penhale, Aylo’s chief legal officer, even went so far as to send a letter to Microsoft, Google, and Apple, begging for their help.  As Wired reported, he asked the tech giants to integrate age-verification tech into not just every app they sell but into their operating systems as well:

Based on our real-world experience with existing age assurance laws, we strongly support the initiative to protect minors online. However, we have found site-based age assurance approaches to be fundamentally flawed and counterproductive.

While Apple and Microsoft didn’t respond to Wired’s request to comment on the letter, Google’s Karl Ryan gave a less than supportive answer, saying, 

Google is committed to protecting kids online, including by developing and deploying new age assurance tools like our Credential Manager API that websites can use. We don’t allow adult entertainment apps on Google Play and would emphasize that certain high-risk services like Aylo will always need to invest in specific tools to meet their own legal and responsibility obligations.  

Storm on the horizon

Putting all this together, it appears Aylo’s dug itself into an extremely deep hole with every failure to block content exploiting non-consensual and underage performers, who suffer great emotional, physical, and financial harm. And Aylo’s out and out lies may ensure it may never see the light of day again.

Worse, its Google, Microsoft, and Apple letters might even be read as an admission of guilt, that despite its public commitment to do better, it seems to admit it can’t fulfil the promises it made to the FTC.

If so, as with any adult platform unable to grasp the why people are up in arms about CSAM and NCM content, then Aylo and all of its other sites deserve an unmarked grave.

Image Sources: Depositphotos

The post Pornhub Coughs up $5 Million FTC Fine—What This Might Mean for Other Adult Content Platforms appeared first on Future of Sex.

Customers sue OnlyFans—thought they were talking with a person, not a bot

As adult content creators rely more and more on artificial intelligence systems to match their fans’ equally rising demands, a recent class action lawsuit reveals a dark side to this arrangement: that there’s a big difference between using AI to help make their customers happy instead of flat out deceiving them.

As reported by Court Watch in collaboration with 404 Media, Illinois residents IM. Brunner and J. Fry are suing OnlyFans—the popular live-streaming platform—for an undisclosed amount.

The plaintiffs claim the performers they’d subscribed to couldn’t have been authentic. They became suspicious after “realizing that a single individual could not send the number of direct messages or videos that generating revenue from 700,000 fans, in one creators’ case, would require.”

Nothing up my sleeve

While the plaintiffs haven’t yet provided actual evidence that they were intentionally tricked into conversing with some form of AI, they described some relatively well-known chatbot tells, specifically “contradicting information and errors” in the messages they’d received.

The suit expressly claims OnlyFans duped Brunner and Fry, in the process violating the terms of their customer agreement, disappointing “the reasonable expectations of Plaintiffs and Class Members, thereby depriving them of the benefit of their bargain.”

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As of this date, OnlyFans has not responded to 404 Media’s inquiries but referenced a 2024 Cosmopolitan article in which a spokesperson for the platform stated, “Creators may choose to work with a wide range of third parties, including photographers, videographers, talent managers and agencies, to curate and monetise their content.”

To put it even more succinctly, “Any third party that a creator elects to work with does not work on behalf of OnlyFans and is not affiliated with the company in any way.” 

Take a card, any card

In contrast to Brunner and Fry’s allegations of being duped, cam performer Chloe Amour, who licensed her physical likeness and on-screen persona to an AI company, was transparent about the arrangement.

She said it was to make her life easier as well as satisfy her fans, “Sometimes there are things that they want to talk about with me, or there are things that they want from me that I might not be able to give them.”

If Brunner and Fry’s suit does have merit, it could be yet another unfortunate sign that AI users and developers are woefully, or worse, willingly ignorant of how vitally important informed consent should and must be.  

A good example is the unauthorized use of everything from books to films in training Large Language Models, which has led to not one, not two, but nearly forty—and counting—separate lawsuits, as noted by The Copyright Alliance.

Abracadabra

Though AI image generation software built from authorized media, such as Chloe Amour’s digitized self, may remain controversial, at least consumers can know what it is and where it came fromand decide whether or not to use it.

Should Brunner and Fry be proven correct, the case could become a crucial benchmark clearly establishing where human adult content creators end and their use of chatbots and their like begin.

In fact, it’s more than somewhat surprising we haven’t seen similar suits. This might be either because AI assistants are just that good, cam show fans don’t care, or don’t care enough to go to court over them—yet!

Watch me pull a rabbit 

If Brunner and Fry’s suit is found in their favor, if the live adult entertainment industry takes notice, if platforms like OnlyFans realize they have to step up, if everyone finally gets why informed consent isn’t just a nice idea but essential, then fingers crossed, we wouldn’t have to worry about being tricked.

Rather, we’d know from the get-go whether we’d be interacting with a person or a bot, and the same would be true for being informed right up front if anything is AI-generated or not.

Lawsuits may not be what gets us there, nor will raising our voices in protest, but what is certain is if we don’t do something, anything, and soon, duplicitous AI practices will become the norm—and consent tragically a thing of the past. 

Image Sources: Depositphotos

The post When’s a Cam Performer Not a Cam Performer?  When It’s AI appeared first on Future of Sex.

Says it’ll please her fans while avoiding performer burnout

When many creative professionals appear to be ever-increasingly concerned their work has been or will be used to train artificial intelligence without their permission or a flood of cheaply produced content could threaten their livelihood, adult performer Chloe Amour’s recent selling of her likeness to an AI developer might, at first glance, be more than a little surprising.

However, as Amour explained to the Daily Mail, she considered the decision carefully, explaining that while she tries to meet the needs of her fans, “sometimes there are things that they want to talk about with me, or there are things that they want from me that I might not be able to give them.”

The answer?  “But through AI, they have the same likeness of me, and it’s like I can be everything that they want me to be in a sense.”

Amour’s licensing of her persona suggests new ways to use AI systems to make life easier for adult content creators while pleasing their audiences.

Smarter not harder

Amour had some initial doubts about the licensing agreement though she soon changed her mind, after realizing the arrangement would provide her with a degree of self-sufficiency. “When you’re booked for [porn] shoots, you’re at the beck and call of that company,” and “‘You’re gonna be on set for anywhere between, four, six, eight, ten, twelve hours, who knows?”

In the end, she wished she’d taken the AI development company’s offer sooner, noting, ” I should’ve signed up with them sooner because I would’ve gotten a bigger bonus!”

This is me—for a price

Amour’s sale of her adult entertainer persona might be relatively unique; but other, non-explicit performers have also begun licensing themselves.  

In fact, the current SAG-AFTRA, Screen Actors Guild agreement grants its members permission while laying out specific guidelines for its members to market their voices and likeness.

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As covered by Forbes, the contract enables how “Performers can specify which brands or industries they are willing to work with, consent on a job-by-job basis and see the proposed audio copy for each ad before they accept the deal,” to ensure complete transparency and equitable pay.

New creators, new creations

Prophetically, earlier this year, we briefly addressed the possibility of adult performers packaging and selling their likenesses and personas to others, including AI development companies.

In addition to the reasons Amour outlined, this would also provide adult performers with much-needed job security as they age.

There’s no reason why adult performers couldn’t create and sell more than a single version of themselves. 

Just as authors may have more than one stylistic voice or write under a variety of different pseudonyms, so too, explicit entertainers might assemble a selection of distinct characters, then hand off that role to an artificially intelligent surrogate.

Everything for everyone 

In a similar vein, it’s a safe bet that right on the heels of adult performers marketing their personas to AI developers in the not-too-distant future, we’ll see artificial companions—which already are being sold with a selection of different, frequently AI-generated personalities—sold with options to run a licensed adult persona.  

When the genie is completely out of its lamp, digitized adult performers may become plug-and-play accessories for everything from explicit game characters to seductively-voiced personal assistants.

While it’s far too early to tell, that same Daily Mail piece asked the same of CamSoda’s Vice President, Daryn Parker, who replied that for certain people, an AI character may provide a more satisfying—and emotionally safe—experience, “‘Users who may not feel comfortable attending a real-time cam show may prefer a model experience that is fully anonymous or where they don’t feel like they have to shy away from certain roleplaying interactions or fantasies that they may feel uncomfortable doing in a chatroom or webcam show where others are present.”

Radio didn’t make reading obsolete, and television didn’t wipe out the movie industry, so we can expect that there will always be a place for fresh-and-blood performers in addition to their digitized selves.

Image Sources: Depositphotos

The post Everything That They Want Me to Be: Adult Entertainer Licenses Persona to AI Developer appeared first on Future of Sex.