Technology Meets… Adult Entertainment

Technology goes undercover – or rather, under the covers

Ric Edelman: It's Wednesday, March 6th. Warning! Today’s show is an adult conversation. We're going to talk frankly and bluntly about technological innovations in the pornography industry. Please consider who you're letting listen to today's podcast and consider your own sensibilities. I really didn't want to talk about this, but this is a show about the future, and the show is so being shaped by technology, it's really impossible to ignore this topic. You know that I was at CES in January, the Consumer Electronics Show, and I gave you an entire week's worth of podcasts on the latest product innovations announced there.  But what I didn't tell you is that at CES, they had an entire section in the massive exhibit hall on adult devices.  Tools and toys to help couples enjoy each other and devices to help you enjoy yourself. The product demonstrations were popular. I hope I'm not shocking you or making you uncomfortable. The fact is that pornography has been a part of our lives for thousands of years. Go look at the paintings and sculptures and writings throughout history, from the Stone age to the Paleolithic era. Erotic cave art in England that's 12,000 years old. Similar items in Germany that are 7,200 years old. Artifacts from Mesopotamia and Sumeria.  This art’s found everywhere. India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Japan, China as well as the Middle East, Africa, Europe, South, Central and North America. The fact is, if there are or were people, there was and is porn. Ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman arts all laced with this stuff. 

You could argue that all these artworks were using the latest technology of the time, whether it was on papyrus or carved into pyramids. When books started to get written, they surely contained references and statements. Even the Bible has passages. In the Old Testament, there's the Song of Songs. He says, how fair and pleasant you are.  Oh loved one, delectable maiden, you are stately as a palm tree, and your breasts are like it’s clusters. I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its branches. Oh, may your breasts be like clusters of the vine. And the scent of your breath like apples. And your kisses like the best wine that goes down smoothly, gliding over lips and teeth. She answers, that pleases my lover, rousing him even from sleep. I am my lover's. He longs for me only for me. He answers, come my beloved, let us go out into the fields and lie all night among the flowering henna. Let us go early to the vineyards. There I will give you my love. Now, if that's not erotic, I don't know what is. And that's in the Bible. Books were a technological marvel, and Gutenberg's printing press revolutionized knowledge and literacy worldwide. So it was no surprise that we saw lots of books featuring erotic content. And then came the invention of photography in 1839. Almost immediately, nude photographs were being created and sold in France. 

Pornographic magazines were sold throughout Victorian England in the 1870s, and then came pornographic comics in the United States in the 1920s. Pinups started in the 1940s, and Playboy magazine debuted in 1953. It featured a photograph of Marilyn Monroe in the centerfold. And we can't ignore the film industry. The first known porno was a seven-minute film in 1896 of a woman performing a bathroom striptease. That year also gave us the very first on-screen kiss, and in 1910, a ten-minute film that starts with a woman enjoying herself, followed by enjoyment of all sorts with a man. The problem was that filmmaking was slow and expensive. Organized crime started setting up production facilities, and traveling salesmen sold the products all over the country. The porn industry quickly became the biggest producers of films, far more than Hollywood ever produced, and the industry spurred technological innovation, so that films could be made faster and cheaper. Eight millimeter, super eight film gauges. They led the way, and eventually movie theaters started getting built solely to show hardcore films, the first one in 1970. And then came videotape. Now we can make films instantly. That ended big budget productions, but the Betamax tapes were short. It was the porn industry that championed the longer running VHS, and then with digital cameras, digital media and animation, anyone could create images never before possible. And where do people primarily see this stuff today? 

People are now primarily downloading their porn on websites, of course. Of the 50 most visited websites in the world, social media and search engines are the top category: Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter now X Baidu, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Yandex, WhatsApp they're the most popular websites, but the number two category is adult porn sites. XVideos dot-com has more visitors each day than Amazon and TikTok. Pornhub, XNXX, XHamster, they're all among the most popular websites in the world. Pornhub, for example, has thousands of free videos and gets a million visitors a day, and people spend almost as much time on Pornhub every day as they do on Facebook. At Pornhub, one porn star alone has produced videos that have been viewed one billion times. At OnlyFans, sex workers interact with you live, as if you're in a zoom meeting and they do whatever you tell them to do. All told, adult websites collectively have 75 million viewers in the United States each day. Think about that. There's only 258 million people 18 or older in the US. That means 30% of all US adults are watching porn videos every day. One out of three. And by the way, 75% of those people are viewing these sites on their mobile devices.  

And today, the most advanced innovations in adult entertainment are robotics, anthropomorphic robotics, to be precise, otherwise known as sex bots or sex dolls. These devices look like humans. They move like humans, and they are starting to include AI, so they behave and respond to inputs like humans, just like Siri and Alexa do now verbally. 

With this technology, you not only just watch porn, you get to direct what the porn does. There's even a term now for people who are attracted to sex bots, they are called digisexuals. Actually, sex bots and sex dolls aren't really new. They go back at least to the 16th century. French and Spanish sailors used puppets when they wanted a break on long voyages. Inflatable dolls came out in 1968. So, what's next?   With the rapid growth in robotics and AI, it's expected that interactive sex bots will be found in a whole lot of American homes, right alongside televisions and video game consoles. What about the negative consequences of these latest robotic and AI applications? Quick…name one group that naturally opposes all of this. No, I'm not talking about religious groups or family values organizations when I talk about groups that oppose robotic and AI porn. I'm sure those groups do hate all of this, or at least their leaders publicly claim to hate it. No, the group of people I'm talking about who oppose this new technology are sex workers. They're afraid that the bots are going to put them out of work. That's because the people you are watching on AI generated porn sites aren't real people. They're AI generated images. 

And just by typing a sentence, you can instruct those images to do whatever you want them to do. You are now the director of your own porn film rather than just a consumer of it. Porn actors are worried that they're going to be out of work as a result of this. But some people really love all this. And I'm not just talking about the people who like to consume porn. Some pretty thoughtful people are arguing that sex-focused robots and AI will reduce rape, and for convicts will reduce assaults in prison. And consider the US surgeon general. He said last year that loneliness and isolation is a national epidemic, as dangerous to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, costing the economy billions of dollars a year. Half of US adults say they've experienced loneliness. Are these devices a solution to this crisis? You can have conversations with porn chat bots that are run by AI, and you can direct the activities of AI generated images that look like a person you find very attractive and interesting because you designed them. And soon, thanks to robotics, you'll be able to be there physically with them as well, not just engaging in the equivalent of a zoom call. These devices might alleviate loneliness for people who work in isolated occupations, like long haul truck drivers or drillers on ocean oil rigs. Sex bots can replace sex trafficking, reduce unwanted pregnancies, eliminate STDs and brothels and sex workers. 

In the future, instead of AI meaning artificial intelligence, it just instead might mean artificial intimacy. On the other hand, these technological innovations have also led to the creation of deep fakes. The most infamous example, of course, just a couple of months ago, when videos went around the internet, supposedly of Taylor Swift engaging in activities, when, of course, somebody had simply superimposed her face onto somebody else's body. One of those tweets was viewed 45 million times before it was taken down. At least Taylor is well known and she's an adult. The real fear is that this tech could be used to harm children, because you can now create child pornography faster, cheaper, and easier than ever. Well, a lot of people are studying all of the social, political and economic implications of porn. There's even now the Journal of Porn, and it's filled with academic articles on all of this ethical and legal challenges associated with the use of AI in pornography and sex work, implications of AI for sex workers, the ethics and legality of AI image creation and pornography. The exploration of racial and ethnic biases and AI porn images. Implications of AI generated content for the mental health and well-being of both consumers and sex workers, and on and on and on. So what's your view of all this? Is all this bad? Is it good? Maybe revolting, maybe enticing.   I'll leave it up to you. What I will tell you, though, is that it's the future. And whether you realize it or not, whether you like it or not, this future is already here.  

Let me change gears now for a moment.  If you're a financial advisor, I invite you to join me for a practice management event with some of the most accomplished financial advisors and RIAs in the country. This event is open only to financial advisors and RIA firms, no fund companies or product providers, its Wealth Management Convergence, and you'll learn all about the vital topics that matter to you right now. Generative AI, Exponential technologies, the latest on longevity, estate planning, crypto, and a whole lot more. You'll also network with some of the most successful advisors in the country, and every session is main stage so you don't miss a thing. No deadly PowerPoints, just engaging conversation. You can also sign up free for one-on-one meetings and our dine-arounds. You'll walk away with the investment strategies that your clients need today, and that you can use to build your practice. Join me in West Palm Beach, Florida this Sunday, March 10th through Tuesday, March 12th at Wealth Management Convergence and connect with fellow financial advisors just like you. Register right now. and enter discount code WMC 2024. You'll save $100.  On tomorrow's show. Has your advisor switched to another firm? 

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