Artificial Intelligence is making tremendous progress nowadays. For a couple of months, the internet has been going crazy about AI text-to-image generators like DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion, Craiyon (previously DALL-E Mini), etc. The internet had a lot of fun with it by making memes; some even addressed the alarming issues of biases in the images generated. All of this was fine and with these AI tools’ privacy and security policies, the anticipated issues could have been manageable.
Pornpen.ai
Fast forward a few months, and a new text-to-image generator is making headlines because it is solely dedicated to generating pornographic images. Porn Pen (pornpen.ai) is dedicated to generating pornographic images of non-existent women with a few simple clicks. The website has tags available like, ‘milf’, ‘big boobs’, ‘mirror selfie’, ‘Asian’, etc. that gives the user choice of body type, setting, ethnicity, hair, and more to create their desired pornographic images. Apart from certain glitches, it nearly creates pretty accurate naked images of women.
The Porn Pen website also states, “pornpen.ai generates adult imagery with custom AI algorithms. Any generations of content on this website that resemble real people are purely coincidental.”
Users have also used Stable Diffusion to create AI-generated pornographic images although it is not a text-to-image generator dedicated to creating porn. This is because of the limited restrictions on user inputs. The Porn Pen website also states, “pornpen.ai generates adult imagery with custom AI algorithms. Any generations of content on this website that resemble real people are purely coincidental.” While the whole concept raises a lot of questions, it is also concerning that these tools could take a toll on someone’s reputation.
Security and privacy concerns
AI porn generators can very easily be used to create deepfake images of anyone. According to researchers that are studying the faces in the images created by AI, images are hardly distinguishable between real and fake. People don’t need a lot of knowledge about AI and Photoshop to create images that can harm someone’s reputation or even ruin someone’s life. Child pornography is another concern that will come hand-in-hand with these kinds of technology.
We know for a fact that text-to-image generators like DALL-E work on a diffusion model and are trained on millions and millions of images that are available on the internet. But where are these images coming from?
Future of the online porn industry
Similar to when people were wondering the text-to-image generators like DALL-E can put artists and creators out of a job, there are people who make porn for a living. Assuming AI becomes the next big thing in porn, it could hurt creators that produce adult content for a living.
Although it is going to take a long time before AI replaces adult content creators, it is still something to ponder about. If AI does make it big to adult porn sites, the restrictions on adult content creators could increase. There are almost negligible laws that revolve around prohibiting the creation of fake pornography.
Women
In this male-dictated world, women are already fighting for basic recognition and rights. Can you imagine that every woman is only one deepfake away destroying the reputation she builds her entire life? Let’s also put emphasis on the fact that AI-generated porn images are being created primarily of WOMEN.
The tags and options that Porn Pen provides on its websites are FOR WOMEN and only images of fake women are being generated. There are people who already objectify women and question the way they dress and present themselves in the world. There is a huge possibility that AI-generated porn is going to create a whole lot of problems for women. Not that men won’t face similar issues but visit the Porn Pen website once and witness naked women all over your screen.
In 2019, a software called DeepNude came into the picture that could turn any image into the image of a naked woman. According to VICE, “It swaps clothes for naked breasts and a vulva, and only works on images of women. When Motherboard tried using an image of a man, it replaced his pants with a vulva.” The creator of DeepNude subsequently took down the application. The company also tweeted:
“The world is not yet ready for DeepNude” is an extremely true statement but do we actually need a tool that could undress women without their consent?
It was DeepNude first, and we have AI-generated porn images now. It’s not long before more such applications and websites will take over the internet and we may not realize its harm until something grave happens. Companies that create them should be held responsible for taking the right measures to minimize their misuse before opening them to the world.
