8 ms·

Riley Reid on AI: 'I Don't Want Porn to Get Left Behind'

72 points by trenchgun 3y ago

gjsman-1000 3y ago
> I love the porn industry. I cherish it, it's been so good to me, and I have always tried my hardest to be giving back and seeing what I can do. I know that a lot, and I mean a lot of people watch porn - yet I don’t know anyone who would describe themselves as “cherishing” the industry for being good to them. Heck, most “performers” say… it’s absolutely merciless to them; because the moment they aren’t in the perfect prime of their lives, they’re done.
- fullshark 3y ago
  She's selling a product here, you can't be sure the quotes are sincere.
  - tstrimple 3y ago
    In addition, she's barely over 30 and a multi-millionaire. It could very well be true that porn has been good to her without it being good for performers overall.
  - richbell 3y ago
    You can also find interviews where she describes the way that porn negatively affected her personal relationships (family, friends, romantic interests).
- conductr 3y ago
  Both can be true, and often are. It’s just like normal acting, sports, etc. Its a meat grinder for most but a few actually do win those lotteries and their appreciation of that is completely understandable
- falcolas 3y ago
  Well, there are some teachers who moved into the streaming side of the industry and started earning well over 10x their teacher salaries. And the streaming side is pretty tame compared to the "professional" production side of things. At the end of the day, there's a lot of money in that profession, and I can certainly see how someone would cherish the money it produced for them. It's far from the only industry which participants will age out of quickly.
  - PlatinumHarp 3y ago
    It's really not different than any other athletic pursuit.
  - lukifer 3y ago
    My suspicion is that at least some of that revenue is moated by social stigma: that a customer is only partially paying for the service received, and is mostly compensating for impacts to reputation and/or lost income in the future (effectively gating supply and therefore raising price). As such stigmas erode, I suspect we’ll see a reversion to the mean: a small handful of disproportionate successes, and a long-tail of subsistence wages (if not “Walmartification” of sex work). (I’m not taking a stance on whether such stigmas eroding is good or bad.) While I’m certainly sympathetic to the “sex work is work” perspective, it’s worth considering the full implications: for instance, that there would be nothing stopping sexual services being included in job descriptions for other lines of work (“administrative assistant with benefits”). It’s the thin end of the wedge, to ask how truly “consensual” employment relationships can be, sexual or otherwise, in contexts of power asymmetry.
- dentemple 3y ago
  Instead of scoffing at the idea of it, why not ask questions to better understand _why_ they feel that way? Why is it that your knee-jerk reaction here is just to discount their opinion entirely in place of your own (likely entirely un-informed) opinion about it?
- lukifer 3y ago
  It may the case that she has a strong enough personal brand, that her experience has been different than many of the horror stories. An analogy comes to mind of an NFL player vs an NCAA player: in both cases, the career might be short-lived and carry health risks, but the former at least carries more compensation and bargaining power, such that the career might end in comfortable retirement rather than destitution. And/or: this could simply be the kind of quasi-Stockholm-Syndrome often seen of those in exploitative relationships, be they labor or otherwise. But while I believe the many disgusting stories we’ve heard about that industry, I’d be hesitant to make assumptions about the motives and experiences of any one individual, in either direction.
- obeid 3y ago
  Be open to the fact that people watch content of sex workers of all ages, genders sizes, and levels of attraction. What is 'prime' for you, might not be someone else's cup of tea.
- randomdata 3y ago
  > Heck, most “performers” say… it’s absolutely merciless to them Sounds like work in general, really. Most people wills say that their work is merciless, yet the "top 1%" will tell you a completely different story. I expect Reid can be considered a "top 1%"-er.
- brokenbyclouds 3y ago
  I mean, that's almost exactly how mainstream Hollywood treats actors, women in particular, as well. It tracks to me.
Eumenes 3y ago
$30/month to chat with a porn star AI chat bot? Can I use my FSA?
- dylan604 3y ago
  There's a billboard for one of the clubs in town that has a tag line of "unlicensed therapists". Seeing how a lot of therapy is just letting someone vent/talk, I'm kind of okay with the FSA idea. There's plenty of other therapy chatBots already out there. <Insert talk about guardrails>
dentemple 3y ago
There's a potential future where these discussions (about whether to work with AI or work against it) will be happening across ALL industries, not just in the x-rated one. We're seeing it here and in the graphic design industry right now because that's what the large majority of people are using AI for. But just like with photography, and just like with the internet, it's not going to stop there. In my personal opinion, this wave is coming EVEN IF AI ends up not being as perfect as people are currently envisioning it as. Because even if it's not perfect, it's convenient and that's already been proven thanks to the likes of ChatGPT and Midjourney. The AI Revolution is here, and, unfortunately, everyone will need to figure out their place in this new world.
- dangus 3y ago
  I read another article on HN where an illustrator was saying that if the tools evolve to be more designed for artists, they could be great for cutting down time-consuming aspects of illustration. I’m not an illustrator but I’m guessing things like coloring and shading are areas where AI could make quick work. We saw technological innovations like Disney’s Xerox machine technique that was used for 101 Dalmatians, and of course we saw computer animation basically decimate hand-drawn animation almost entirely. Even in areas where animation is hand drawn, it’s usually done so in a digital workflow. The people out there that are scared of AI and refuse to use it are making a mistake. It’s here. It’s not going to get less capable, it’s going to keep getting more capable. I think the average person should try to be an early adopter to have an advantage in our new world.
  - iopq 3y ago
    Hell, it can give you a finished image
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- Workaccount2 3y ago
  What does it mean to "work with AI" in the context of the future or even near future? A symbolic job of checking it's outputs? Even if AI doesn't take your job, it almost certainly will take most of the value it has. I don't need a $175k dev when I can use a model and a $60k dev to do the same thing. Or on the graphics side, artists are a dime a dozen, I don't need the cream of the crop if they are just gonna be fixing up mangled AI hands.
markx2 3y ago
"Market analysis makes it clear: sex is driving the development and adoption of artificial intelligence." I recall seeing - many many years ago - a WoW video "The internet is for porn" . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRgNOyCnbqg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRgNOyCnbqg Then more recently there was the "Pornhub. The biggest archive of nothing" advertising - SFW - https://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/pornhub-finalists-12-2014.jpg https://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/pornhub-... I cannot see any scenario where porn 'would be left behind'.
- jddj 3y ago
  Porn won't be left behind. The encumbents could be.
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  The Internet is for Porn is a well known song from Avenue Q (predating wow)
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Porn driving a lot of the things on the Internet (which isn't quite the same sentiment) long predates Avenue Q and almost certainly the Web. There was a fair bit of porn on many BBS systems as well--not video obviously.
    - thesuitonym 3y ago
      Okay fine, who cares? The song is still from Avenue Q.
    - mcphage 3y ago
      > Porn driving a lot of the things on the Internet long predates Avenue Q Right, but "The internet is for porn" is also a specific song from the musical Avenue Q, and that's the song that's being sung in the WoW video linked above. So the parent poster wasn't talking about the sentiment in general, but the specific song being used.
- deleted 3y ago
smrtinsert 3y ago
> My dad is a programmer, and he told me recently he’s working with AI because he realized his job is starting to become obsolete—and he will become obsolete if he doesn't know how to work alongside it. I didn't expect myself to be agreeing with Riley Reid and her dad today.
- dentemple 3y ago
  With how prolific Riley is, her dad must suffer the most acute case of "Risky Click of the Day" with his internet usage.
  - sdfghswe 3y ago
    Yeah I'm sure everyone of those click was accidental.
mark_l_watson 3y ago
A few years ago I was into Eric Weinstein’s content on YouTube. He interviewed Riley Reid, and she is definitely intelligent. It was actually an interesting conversation. On the broader topic of AI companion chatbots: a bad idea! There are so many opportunities in life to develop real relationships, with real people.
- grammerguy 3y ago
  Not everyone can or will develop those relationships though. There are people who have mental or physical limitations that make that difficult or impossible, and companion chat bots could be really helpful to them. It could even give them the tools needed to form “real “relationships down the road.
  - lacrimacida 3y ago
    Those chatbots will only pull them deeper into an isolated bubble with all sorts of distortions manipulable by tech giants. Are we ready to deal with all that?
  - SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
    People say this but i actually don’t think chatbots can provide tools to help form real relationships until they model the kind of behaviors that fundamentally make it hard to form relationships. Chatbots need to be unavailable at inopportune times, have moods that are affected by more than just the person talking to them, take their time in forgiving slights, etc. Even therapists consider it valuable to therapy that you don’t get to talk to your therapist 24/7. The ability to sit with your issues independently is important— just as important is the ability to not freak out when a friend doesn’t text you back asap.
  - candiodari 3y ago
    On the other hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDFzOjw0pFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDFzOjw0pFU
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    I don't see how they could be actually helpful except perhaps as a tool used under the care of a therapist. At best, it would be like giving someone a morphine drip for pain rather than doing anything to actually heal the condition causing the pain. It may sound good, but it may also be an active disincentive to addressing their real issue.
29athrowaway 3y ago
The porn industry has been a tech pioneer in many areas. Twitch-like live streaming with micropayments was first seen in porn. Subscriptions, micropayments, VR, etc.
- dangus 3y ago
  The histogram representation of most popular sections of the video as well.
  - 29athrowaway 3y ago
    And the thumbnails for each frame, and the section titles.
  - yard2010 3y ago
    Hahaha my first thought when youtube launched it was "shit is this pornhub"
amelius 3y ago
If you can't beat them, join em.
- dmd 3y ago
  Well, typically for porn, the idea is “if you can’t join’em, beat’em.”
brucethemoose2 3y ago
Those porn-tuned Llama/Mistral finetunes are the finest non-pornographic storytelling AIs I have seen. They also seems to be driving "research" in stuff like merging methods, model "grafting," and llm evaluation. Some examples: https://rentry.co/ayumi_erp_rating https://rentry.co/ayumi_erp_rating https://huggingface.co/NeverSleep/Mistral-11B-OmniMix-bf16 https://huggingface.co/NeverSleep/Mistral-11B-OmniMix-bf16 https://huggingface.co/Sao10K/Euryale-1.3-L2-70B https://huggingface.co/Sao10K/Euryale-1.3-L2-70B And for what its worth, HuggingFace does not seem to care. The model repo isn't mostly porn like CivitAI, but they seem to be OK with a significant amount of it.
- diggan 3y ago
  > And for what its worth, HuggingFace does not seem to care. Almost no one except the payment processors care about porn text/video/images. But once they find out what's hosted on huggingface, they'll be quick to react I'm sure.
  - brucethemoose2 3y ago
    I suspect HuggingFace is "Too Big To Ban." Not because they are at the scale of Reddit or Twitter, but they are at the very center of AI World, and it would look really bad to shareholders and the finance crowd if they made a fuss over an AI company. And HF themself trained an "uncensored" model (Zephyr 7B), and very specifically pointed out that model performance seemed to be better without the alignment.
bulla 3y ago
Basically $30 a month to talk to a chatbot pretending to be Riley.
kmnc 3y ago
I wonder what the difference between her chatbot and the chatbot that likely responds to you if you message her on onlyfans is. Probably the same thing. If you want to try a non guardrailed chat AI try Chai, for free. It is pretty good. Even still, I have found with these bots they either get repetitive very fast or will output some nonsensical thing that breaks any immersion. Fully AI webcam girls are on the horizon, that will completely change the porn industry. These chatbots are just money grabs at horny dudes.

72 points by trenchgun 3y ago

> I love the porn industry. I cherish it, it's been so good to me, and I have always tried my hardest to be giving back and seeing what I can do. I know that a lot, and I mean a lot of people watch porn - yet I don’t know anyone who would describe themselves as “cherishing” the industry for being good to them. Heck, most “performers” say… it’s absolutely merciless to them; because the moment they aren’t in the perfect prime of their lives, they’re done.

fullshark 3y ago
She's selling a product here, you can't be sure the quotes are sincere.
- tstrimple 3y ago
  In addition, she's barely over 30 and a multi-millionaire. It could very well be true that porn has been good to her without it being good for performers overall.
- richbell 3y ago
  You can also find interviews where she describes the way that porn negatively affected her personal relationships (family, friends, romantic interests).
conductr 3y ago
Both can be true, and often are. It’s just like normal acting, sports, etc. Its a meat grinder for most but a few actually do win those lotteries and their appreciation of that is completely understandable
falcolas 3y ago
Well, there are some teachers who moved into the streaming side of the industry and started earning well over 10x their teacher salaries. And the streaming side is pretty tame compared to the "professional" production side of things. At the end of the day, there's a lot of money in that profession, and I can certainly see how someone would cherish the money it produced for them. It's far from the only industry which participants will age out of quickly.
- PlatinumHarp 3y ago
  It's really not different than any other athletic pursuit.
- lukifer 3y ago
  My suspicion is that at least some of that revenue is moated by social stigma: that a customer is only partially paying for the service received, and is mostly compensating for impacts to reputation and/or lost income in the future (effectively gating supply and therefore raising price). As such stigmas erode, I suspect we’ll see a reversion to the mean: a small handful of disproportionate successes, and a long-tail of subsistence wages (if not “Walmartification” of sex work). (I’m not taking a stance on whether such stigmas eroding is good or bad.) While I’m certainly sympathetic to the “sex work is work” perspective, it’s worth considering the full implications: for instance, that there would be nothing stopping sexual services being included in job descriptions for other lines of work (“administrative assistant with benefits”). It’s the thin end of the wedge, to ask how truly “consensual” employment relationships can be, sexual or otherwise, in contexts of power asymmetry.
dentemple 3y ago
Instead of scoffing at the idea of it, why not ask questions to better understand _why_ they feel that way? Why is it that your knee-jerk reaction here is just to discount their opinion entirely in place of your own (likely entirely un-informed) opinion about it?
lukifer 3y ago
It may the case that she has a strong enough personal brand, that her experience has been different than many of the horror stories. An analogy comes to mind of an NFL player vs an NCAA player: in both cases, the career might be short-lived and carry health risks, but the former at least carries more compensation and bargaining power, such that the career might end in comfortable retirement rather than destitution. And/or: this could simply be the kind of quasi-Stockholm-Syndrome often seen of those in exploitative relationships, be they labor or otherwise. But while I believe the many disgusting stories we’ve heard about that industry, I’d be hesitant to make assumptions about the motives and experiences of any one individual, in either direction.
obeid 3y ago
Be open to the fact that people watch content of sex workers of all ages, genders sizes, and levels of attraction. What is 'prime' for you, might not be someone else's cup of tea.
randomdata 3y ago
> Heck, most “performers” say… it’s absolutely merciless to them Sounds like work in general, really. Most people wills say that their work is merciless, yet the "top 1%" will tell you a completely different story. I expect Reid can be considered a "top 1%"-er.
brokenbyclouds 3y ago
I mean, that's almost exactly how mainstream Hollywood treats actors, women in particular, as well. It tracks to me.

Eumenes 3y ago

$30/month to chat with a porn star AI chat bot? Can I use my FSA?

dylan604 3y ago
There's a billboard for one of the clubs in town that has a tag line of "unlicensed therapists". Seeing how a lot of therapy is just letting someone vent/talk, I'm kind of okay with the FSA idea. There's plenty of other therapy chatBots already out there. <Insert talk about guardrails>

dentemple 3y ago

There's a potential future where these discussions (about whether to work with AI or work against it) will be happening across ALL industries, not just in the x-rated one. We're seeing it here and in the graphic design industry right now because that's what the large majority of people are using AI for. But just like with photography, and just like with the internet, it's not going to stop there. In my personal opinion, this wave is coming EVEN IF AI ends up not being as perfect as people are currently envisioning it as. Because even if it's not perfect, it's convenient and that's already been proven thanks to the likes of ChatGPT and Midjourney. The AI Revolution is here, and, unfortunately, everyone will need to figure out their place in this new world.

dangus 3y ago
I read another article on HN where an illustrator was saying that if the tools evolve to be more designed for artists, they could be great for cutting down time-consuming aspects of illustration. I’m not an illustrator but I’m guessing things like coloring and shading are areas where AI could make quick work. We saw technological innovations like Disney’s Xerox machine technique that was used for 101 Dalmatians, and of course we saw computer animation basically decimate hand-drawn animation almost entirely. Even in areas where animation is hand drawn, it’s usually done so in a digital workflow. The people out there that are scared of AI and refuse to use it are making a mistake. It’s here. It’s not going to get less capable, it’s going to keep getting more capable. I think the average person should try to be an early adopter to have an advantage in our new world.
- iopq 3y ago
  Hell, it can give you a finished image
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Workaccount2 3y ago
What does it mean to "work with AI" in the context of the future or even near future? A symbolic job of checking it's outputs? Even if AI doesn't take your job, it almost certainly will take most of the value it has. I don't need a $175k dev when I can use a model and a $60k dev to do the same thing. Or on the graphics side, artists are a dime a dozen, I don't need the cream of the crop if they are just gonna be fixing up mangled AI hands.

markx2 3y ago

"Market analysis makes it clear: sex is driving the development and adoption of artificial intelligence." I recall seeing - many many years ago - a WoW video "The internet is for porn" . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRgNOyCnbqg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRgNOyCnbqg Then more recently there was the "Pornhub. The biggest archive of nothing" advertising - SFW - https://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/pornhub-finalists-12-2014.jpg https://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/pornhub-... I cannot see any scenario where porn 'would be left behind'.

jddj 3y ago
Porn won't be left behind. The encumbents could be.
zeroonetwothree 3y ago
The Internet is for Porn is a well known song from Avenue Q (predating wow)
- ghaff 3y ago
  Porn driving a lot of the things on the Internet (which isn't quite the same sentiment) long predates Avenue Q and almost certainly the Web. There was a fair bit of porn on many BBS systems as well--not video obviously.
  - thesuitonym 3y ago
    Okay fine, who cares? The song is still from Avenue Q.
  - mcphage 3y ago
    > Porn driving a lot of the things on the Internet long predates Avenue Q Right, but "The internet is for porn" is also a specific song from the musical Avenue Q, and that's the song that's being sung in the WoW video linked above. So the parent poster wasn't talking about the sentiment in general, but the specific song being used.
deleted 3y ago

smrtinsert 3y ago

> My dad is a programmer, and he told me recently he’s working with AI because he realized his job is starting to become obsolete—and he will become obsolete if he doesn't know how to work alongside it. I didn't expect myself to be agreeing with Riley Reid and her dad today.

dentemple 3y ago
With how prolific Riley is, her dad must suffer the most acute case of "Risky Click of the Day" with his internet usage.
- sdfghswe 3y ago
  Yeah I'm sure everyone of those click was accidental.

mark_l_watson 3y ago

A few years ago I was into Eric Weinstein’s content on YouTube. He interviewed Riley Reid, and she is definitely intelligent. It was actually an interesting conversation. On the broader topic of AI companion chatbots: a bad idea! There are so many opportunities in life to develop real relationships, with real people.

grammerguy 3y ago
Not everyone can or will develop those relationships though. There are people who have mental or physical limitations that make that difficult or impossible, and companion chat bots could be really helpful to them. It could even give them the tools needed to form “real “relationships down the road.
- lacrimacida 3y ago
  Those chatbots will only pull them deeper into an isolated bubble with all sorts of distortions manipulable by tech giants. Are we ready to deal with all that?
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
  People say this but i actually don’t think chatbots can provide tools to help form real relationships until they model the kind of behaviors that fundamentally make it hard to form relationships. Chatbots need to be unavailable at inopportune times, have moods that are affected by more than just the person talking to them, take their time in forgiving slights, etc. Even therapists consider it valuable to therapy that you don’t get to talk to your therapist 24/7. The ability to sit with your issues independently is important— just as important is the ability to not freak out when a friend doesn’t text you back asap.
- candiodari 3y ago
  On the other hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDFzOjw0pFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDFzOjw0pFU
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I don't see how they could be actually helpful except perhaps as a tool used under the care of a therapist. At best, it would be like giving someone a morphine drip for pain rather than doing anything to actually heal the condition causing the pain. It may sound good, but it may also be an active disincentive to addressing their real issue.

29athrowaway 3y ago

The porn industry has been a tech pioneer in many areas. Twitch-like live streaming with micropayments was first seen in porn. Subscriptions, micropayments, VR, etc.

dangus 3y ago
The histogram representation of most popular sections of the video as well.
- 29athrowaway 3y ago
  And the thumbnails for each frame, and the section titles.
- yard2010 3y ago
  Hahaha my first thought when youtube launched it was "shit is this pornhub"

amelius 3y ago

If you can't beat them, join em.

dmd 3y ago
Well, typically for porn, the idea is “if you can’t join’em, beat’em.”

brucethemoose2 3y ago

Those porn-tuned Llama/Mistral finetunes are the finest non-pornographic storytelling AIs I have seen. They also seems to be driving "research" in stuff like merging methods, model "grafting," and llm evaluation. Some examples: https://rentry.co/ayumi_erp_rating https://rentry.co/ayumi_erp_rating https://huggingface.co/NeverSleep/Mistral-11B-OmniMix-bf16 https://huggingface.co/NeverSleep/Mistral-11B-OmniMix-bf16 https://huggingface.co/Sao10K/Euryale-1.3-L2-70B https://huggingface.co/Sao10K/Euryale-1.3-L2-70B And for what its worth, HuggingFace does not seem to care. The model repo isn't mostly porn like CivitAI, but they seem to be OK with a significant amount of it.

diggan 3y ago
> And for what its worth, HuggingFace does not seem to care. Almost no one except the payment processors care about porn text/video/images. But once they find out what's hosted on huggingface, they'll be quick to react I'm sure.
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  I suspect HuggingFace is "Too Big To Ban." Not because they are at the scale of Reddit or Twitter, but they are at the very center of AI World, and it would look really bad to shareholders and the finance crowd if they made a fuss over an AI company. And HF themself trained an "uncensored" model (Zephyr 7B), and very specifically pointed out that model performance seemed to be better without the alignment.

bulla 3y ago

Basically $30 a month to talk to a chatbot pretending to be Riley.

kmnc 3y ago

I wonder what the difference between her chatbot and the chatbot that likely responds to you if you message her on onlyfans is. Probably the same thing. If you want to try a non guardrailed chat AI try Chai, for free. It is pretty good. Even still, I have found with these bots they either get repetitive very fast or will output some nonsensical thing that breaks any immersion. Fully AI webcam girls are on the horizon, that will completely change the porn industry. These chatbots are just money grabs at horny dudes.