What a fascinating phenomenon we can say we’ve lived through: the sex industry’s digital advent.
Sex has become a highly accessible, non-taboo pleasure increasingly sought via phone sex, pornographic films, camming and sex robots, catapulting demand for and participation in “sex work”.
Hamilton et al. in their 2022 article “Risk, Resilience and Reward: Impacts of Shifting to Digital Sex Work” propose sex work, primarily describing the exchange of intimate acts for money, includes a laundry list of activities like escorting, professional BDSM, stripping or lap-dancing, phone sex and webcamming (p. 3). Sex work, whether in person or online, is heavily stigmatized, and as a profession overwhelmingly represented by women, migrants and transpeople, contributes to disparities in gender-centric narratives. But that’s another beast of a discussion entirely. . . *Wipes brow*
Perhaps there’s opportunity yet to change the way sex work is perceived in society. Could its digital reinvention be the catalyst?
There’s talk of using our platforms and influence for empowerment rather than imprisonment.
For some, the digitization of sex has entirely reimagined how we work and support ourselves. In her 2022 article “The Digital Age: Giving Sex Work a New Meaning,” Allison Garvey suggests, with a new domain for sex work, “A struggling mother can now easily work from home and use images and videos of her body to be able to pay for summer camp or groceries without even leaving the house” (p. 80).
Sex work is on the rise, there’s no denying that! But to what do we owe credit for its ascending popularity?
Potentially the most significant recent shift in the sex industry came at the behest of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. Strip clubs and adult entertainment businesses closed their doors in response to pandemic restrictions, but somehow, sex has survived.
It has been a rocky conversion, though, for some sex workers who’ve since transitioned to online services, and not everyone has been as successful with it.
“To transition to online sex work requires special circumstances that we don’t all have,” said an anonymous sex worker in Susannah Breslin’s 2020 Forbes article “Here’s How Strippers Are Surviving the Coronavirus Pandemic.” Included in the anonymous’ list are a private space to perform or stream, a reliable computer in optimal recording condition, access to makeup and wardrobe options, and, as a bonus, a tripod and lighting enhancements.
The primary dilemma this new precedent creates is the inaccessibility of these performance luxuries for some sex workers. But we must also consider the turf war between newcomers and those who may already “own” the virtual sex space.
“The competition out there is thick, and the models who have been working the internet a long time have home-court advantage,” said the sex worker. “Additionally, it’s a privilege to be able to take your business online. You need to be willing to be “out” as a sex worker, because while it’s unlikely your parents or civilian associates will find out you work at a strip club that you drive three hours to dance at, your porn will be discovered.”
Indeed, some privacy and safety sacrifices are required for those who provide sexual content online with hopes of achieving significant visibility. This presents yet another challenge, specifically for a population of sex workers with trickier circumstances impacting their security.
Triggered by former President Trump’s threat to dismantle the Differed Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Maya, a sex worker and mother who migrated from Honduras to New York, was forced to resort to sex work to keep food on her table. If she lost her right to work legally, she could rely on the security of underground sex work to sustain her family.
But, in a 2020 interview with Alexis Okeowo for The New Yorker’s “The Fragile Existence of Sex Workers During the Pandemic,” Maya admitted she was desperate enough during quarantine to seek clients while her daughter stayed with relatives. Any time she’d post an advertisement for her services online, anxiety forced her to remove it. But she knew she’d have to maintain a presence on social media to bolster her business. That’s when Maya, despite the additional risk digital sex work carries, joined millions of other content creators on OnlyFans, which Okeowo contends received an “unexpected cachet, a cult appeal” at the onset of quarantine.
OnlyFans is adored for the immediacy, personalization and cross-promotability of primarily sexual user-generated content for an optional customer subscription fee. Though Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and other current social networking sites ban even the hint of sexually explicit content on their platforms, the abundance of this content gave OnlyFans its prestige.
A vote of confidence for the platform, “Sex Work Re-loaded: How Digital Platforms are re-defining Sex Work” author Martin Trans contends “digitally mediated sex work has enabled sex workers a safer place by many means: the ability to work independently and not being reliant on a third-party agency, evading enquiries from the police and earning more money due to the large audience the internet offers” (2022).
Interest in personalized and consistent explicit content has only grown since OnlyFans’ arrival, driving sex workers to “camming” to meet consumers’ ever-evolving needs.
Differing from traditional pornography due to its live performance capability and customizability according to viewers’ tastes, camming is a conventional form of digital intimacy. In contrast to sites like Pornhub and static content on a creator’s social media feed or website, camming satisfies needs for real-time, remote intimacy as well as feelings of connectedness.
As Katie Bishop describes it in her 2020 Observer article “Coronavirus Has Scrambled the Sex and Porn Industry. Cam Girls Are Cashing In.”, “When loneliness is as endemic as the virus itself, and the stresses of an upended reality invade our everyday lives, being able to interact with cam girls can be a lifeline for some.”
Fortunately for victims of this endemic, in 2022, Valeria Rubattu and her team of researchers in “Cam girls and adult performers are enjoying a boom in business,” found that sites like OnlyFans provide customers “the girlfriend experience” wherein creators sell not just desired sexual content but the companion role, remembering birthdays and special occasions or perhaps more intimate details of a customer’s life (p. 14).
But camming and OnlyFans don’t provide a satisfactorily realistic experience for everyone. So, if this isn’t enough and society has transcended traditional sex work, what do customers with proximity needs do?
Known for their humanoid form, human-like cadence, and at least slight degree of artificial intelligence, sex robots have become the rave for alternative intimate interactions, suggests Annette Masterson in her 2020 doctoral dissertation “Sex robots at home: A political-economic analysis of a changing sex industry.” Notwithstanding their inability to procreate or “produce the labor of a housewife,” their advancing design has forced scholars to question what role sex robots will play in future constructions of sex (p. 20).
“Where objects such as sex dolls require an imagined personality, sex robots operate through artificial intelligence systems, allowing the user to communicate with the robot and shape its personality more directly,” Masterson notes (p. 22).
Imagine the women’s role in intimacy being eliminated once technological innovation enables sex robots to bear children and fulfill household duties.
. . . Jokes aside, this in fact may be where we’re headed.
In a 2023 article exploring intimate relations between humans and AI companions, Jindong Leo-Liu credits one driver for human interaction with social robots as relating to the subordination and controllability of these robots in simulated intimate relationships (p. 1).
Is it, then, human dominance and robot compliance that are the crux of this dynamic or do humans simply favor the no-judgment nature of their AI-companion interactions?
Certainly, it could be both!
We earlier this semester discussed human-AI relationships online. But with sex robots, along with that self-fulfilling social interaction, humans engage in sexual relations with AI companions that possess ideal human features and physiques while being free of any human-human relational hardship.
One thing is for certain: “sextech” is the future!
Bernard Marr, who has authored several articles on sex robots and sex in the age of generative AI like the 2020 Forbes article “Future Of Intimacy: Sex Bots, Virtual Reality, And Smart Sex Toys”, explains technological advancement in sextech includes human-like sex bots; app-compatible, smart vibrators, stimulators and massagers; personalized porn using virtual reality and augmented sexual experiences; and much more.
These gadgets are engineered to mimic and optimize the human pleasuring experience. Marr offers many of these smart sex toys originate from women “who address sexuality with new voices and concerns.” Perhaps, then, their greatest appeal is that they are made for women by women who’ve considered the woman’s perspective on sexual pleasure and focus less on aspects of partner pleasing.
Marr returned to Forbes in 2024 with “Sex And Intimacy In The Generative AI Era” to discuss the explosion of generative AI in sexual interactions.
Would you believe that virtual models are now one of the “it” ways to sell and consume sex on the internet?
Yes, says Marr, “Sites like Candy.ai, DreamGF and VirtualGF let users create their own virtual girlfriends that will then engage in explicit chat with them and even send revealing pictures of themselves.”
These models can be AI versions of prominent figures or uniquely generated AI models that exist solely in the digital realm. And when you can design your ideal partner digitally and still engage in satisfying sexual encounters with them whenever you please, what are the withstanding merits of human relationships?
Augmented and virtual interactions and relationships are steadily becoming more interpersonal and realistic, so is it finally time to consider the threat this technology poses to human-human relationships and, a step further, reproduction?
It’s the notion of an ideal partner that draws many customers to AI companions, though, not just their physical presentation. Says Marr, “For dating app users who are fed up with being ghosted, Flure has come up with a solution. Their AI, Anna, is “always on” and promises to give each user her undivided attention. This allows users to exchange an unlimited number of messages and pictures, all personalized to their own taste” (2024).
And we’d be remiss not to consider the ChatGPT Pleasure Companion Lovense created, which can narrate erotic stories based on the preferences of its respective user.
With the uptick in “digisexuals”, or those whose sexual identity is linked to their use of pornography or cybersex technology, we must recognize that deepfake AI, advanced robotics, and emotional AI are transforming sexuality, consent and human connection. Positively and negatively.
“January 2024 marked two watershed moments in the intersection of artificial intelligence and human sexuality,” claims Virginie Berger in her 2024 Forbes article “AI Is Changing The Future Of Human Intimacy. Here’s What To Know.” One was the jaw-dropping, viral AI-generated images falsely and explicitly depicting Taylor Swift on social media, which spotlighted the capability of AI to threaten consent and privacy procedures as well as rights in the digital world. While Taylor loyalists may not have been convinced of the authenticity of these images outright, the startling reality is that they were believable.
We’re at a point where technology, specifically AI, has the potential to fully disrupt the decencies and protections humans have worked hard to enforce in this space, and we need ask ourselves if we’re equipped to chart a future where the line between human and digital intimacy increasingly blurs.
In addition to a hearty list of safety and privacy concerns with the digital adaptation of sex are its ethical concerns. Digital sex work is a fast-spreading fire that cannot be extinguished, and just as it provides conveniences to intimate relations, it poses detrimental threats to our ability to form healthy bonds with other humans. AI sex will inevitably distort perceptions of intimacy and cause impatience in intimate interactions between humans.
So, what are your thoughts? Is sex work on its way to being decriminalized and destigmatized as it, in all its forms, becomes more normalized?
Where do you think sex and sex work are headed in the future? What’s going to be the next groundbreaking innovation to sex online?
References
Berger, V. (2024). AI Is Changing The Future Of Human Intimacy. Here’s What To Know. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/virginieberger/2024/10/22/ai-is-changing-the-future-of-human-intimacy-heres-what-to-know/
Bishop, K (2020). Coronavirus Has Scrambled the Sex and Porn Industry. Cam Girls Are Cashing In. Observer. https://observer.com/2020/05/cam-girls-on-the-rise-coronavirus-porn/
Breslin, S. (2020). Here’s how strippers are surviving the coronavirus pandemic. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/susannahbreslin/2020/05/13/a-strippers-coach-reveals-how-strippers-are-surviving-the-pandemic/
Garvey, A. (2022). The digital age: Giving sex work a new meaning. Journal of Feminist Scholarship, 20(20), 80-81. https://doi.org/10.23860/jfs.2022.20.10
Hamilton, V., Barakat, H., & Redmiles, E. M. (2022). Risk, resilience and reward: Impacts of shifting to digital sex work. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 6(CSCW2), 1-37. https://doi.org/10.1145/3555650
Leo-Liu, J. (2023). Loving a “defiant” AI companion? The gender performance and ethics of social exchange robots in simulated intimate interactions. Computers in Human Behavior, 141, 107620. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2022.107620
Marr, B. (2020). Future Of Intimacy: Sex Bots, Virtual Reality, And Smart Sex Toys. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2020/11/30/future-of-intimacy-sex-bots-virtual-reality-and-smart-sex-toys/
Marr, B. (2024). Sex And Intimacy In The Generative AI Era. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2024/04/15/sex-and-intimacy-in-the-generative-ai-era/
Masterson, A. M. S. (2024). Sex robots at home: A political-economic analysis of a changing sex industry (Doctoral dissertation, Temple University. Libraries). http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/10251
Okeowo, A. (2020). The Fragile Existence of Sex Workers During the Pandemic. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-fragile-existence-of-sex-workers-during-the-pandemic
Rubattu, V., Perdion, A., & Brooks-Gordon, B. (2023). ‘Cam girls and adult performers are enjoying a boom in business’: the reportage on the pandemic impact on virtual sex work. Social Sciences, 12(2), 62. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12020062
Tao, S. (2023). Lovense Plus ChatGPT Equals Your Very Own AI-Controlled Pleasure Companion. Future of Sex. https://futureofsex.net/sex-tech/lovense-plus-chatgpt-equals-your-very-own-ai-controlled-pleasure-companion/
Trans, M. (2021). Sex Work Re-loaded: How Digital Platforms are re-defining Sex Work. Masters of Media. https://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/blog/2021/10/27/sex-work-re-loaded-how-digital-platforms-are-re-defining-sex-work/
