Times are changing. With the advancement of technology, everything has become a lot simpler than it was, say, 100 years ago. Smartphones have become commonplace, international travel can be booked from the comfort of your home with just the press of a button, and pornography is more accessible than ever before—and free, too, thanks to the Internet. In fact, free porn is everywhere these days, having extended beyond the real world into the virtual world, and the ways in which it is experienced are also changing.
The utilization of rapidly growing technology by the porn industry means that the methods and presentation of pornography will continue to evolve as newer, better technology becomes available. This begs two questions:
- What will porn be like in the next 100 years?
- Will the future role of hairy porn stars remain the same?
Virtual Reality
A few years ago virtual reality (VR) made its debut on the market. Since then it has been lauded as the future of porn and has been labeled as a disruptive technology that can change both the ways in which people get off and what they get off to. According to Holly Richmond, a clinical psychologist, shooting video in 3D means that the entire filming process has to be reworked, which gives producers of porn a chance to redefine what people can experience, and to make porn better.
And indeed, the virtual porn industry promises to offer even more realistic immersive experiences in the future. This has the potential to change the paradigm; it could transform the viewer's experience from that of a spectator to that of an actor. So while 3D porn today looks more real than conventional porn, the 3D porn of the future may offer even more seemingly authentic interaction.
Experts such as Dr. Chauntelle Tibbals, a sociologist, have tried to determine whether VR is the future of the porn industry. She claims that some people will make use of virtual VR headsets to add more dimension to the sexual fantasy, as the enhanced interactive nature of such virtual porn environments can transform consumers from mere onlookers into active participants in porn videos.
Futuristic porn can be envisioned as tendering a different kind of experience delivered via virtual reality. For example, a user could become immersed in a highly realistic situation in which they have to negotiate for sexual relations. This type of involved experience could mean the end of certain genres of pornography, such as evolved fights.
There is no lack of controversy surrounding virtual porn videos, however. The downsides of virtual porn environments are many. In one particular study conducted by Conversation Magazine, participants were asked to imagine a fictional character and the kind of use their character would make of VR technology. While some of the participants imagined positive situations, others imagined negative ones. Some of the participants imagined having the ability to recreate virtual images of real people to entertain themselves with in immersive experiences, and even to enact violence upon. This gives rise to a whole set of moral and ethical issues concerning virtual porn of the future.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deepfake Videos
Such issues bring us to a type of pornography called Deepfake videos. These are AI-generated clips that use machine-learning algorithms to allow users to insert famous people’s faces into pre-existing videos frame by frame. Despite the videos having some glitches, they are still realistic and compelling, and they are only getting more believable as the technology improves. The videos are marketed as hacked or stolen, adding to the impression of authenticity and making them even more compelling.
If this practice becomes the norm, there is a danger that anyone could have their face recreated in a pornographic video. Revenge porn would assume an entirely new dimension as wounded exes seek vengeance to assuage their emotional pain, and in the process ruin lives by publishing seemingly genuine pornography featuring former partners.
Experts believe that algorithms such as Deepfakes could one day be used to replace images of real people in a variety of situations, including dating app profiles, political propaganda and a host of other scenarios aside from its pornographic uses. In 2019, an artificial intelligence company in Japan came up with an algorithm that can automatically generate an entire body in motion. The company envisaged this technology being used for advertising purposes. Nonetheless, it is not hard to imagine it being used for pornographic purposes, as utilizing such technologies would make it easier to come up with the extreme content that consumers of porn want, but in which actors might not be prepared to perform.
One adult performer, and the founder of the virtual reality company Viro Club, a platform that syncs adult entertainment toys to sex avatars, provides insight into this. She says that the characters generated by algorithms are very similar to human actors, giving rise to concerns that these developed characters might replace actual human performers one day.
While the expense and effort involved in coming up with such footage means that the entire body-in-motion deep fakes are unlikely to replace actual performers' videos any time soon, there is still the potential for it to happen in the next 20, 30, 50, or 60 years.
An article on sex, sexual fantasies, and pornography would not be not complete without considering sex toys. As with the evolution of porn, sex toys are also evolving. These days, smart sex toys, just like other artificial intelligence objects, learn from data gathered by sensors in order to elevate the experience. Along with increasing the realism of future VR porn, use of AI will undoubtedly expand to include sex toys and sex robots that are very realistic and highly customized.
Realdoll is a company that develops male and female robots. They offer technologically advanced AI-driven robots that can move, blink, speak, and much more. This highly developed artificial intelligence could have both negative and positive implications for the porn industry. AI robots might be the porn stars of the future, and while the technology may create unrealistic expectations, perhaps it is just what the industry needs.
Conclusion
Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and other advanced technologies have opened up a new world of knowledge, enabled healthy sexual expression, advanced education, and made other positive impacts on the world. But apart from its promise of a deeper dimension to sexual fantasy via a more realistic porn experience, the use of these technologies to produce advanced virtual reality pornography also presents some ethical challenges that need to be considered.
Wherever the advancing technology takes us, however, and whatever its advantages and drawbacks, one thing is certain: porn promises to be very different in the future compared to what it is now, and certainly to what it was 100 years ago. Those same rapidly evolving technologies that power our lives today ensure the future transformation of the porn industry, possibly in ways not even yet imagined.
Author: Omar Silver
