When Ela Darling began performing in porn at the tail end of the 2000s, tube sites like Pornhub were relatively new, and major studios like Vivid and Digital Playground still dominated the market. For performers, the job was straightforward: show up to set, turn in a good performance, and collect a check. Everything else \u2014 from scripting the scene to editing and marketing to makeup \u2014 was generally handled by the studio\u2019s team of professionals.<\/p>\n
Fast forward to 2025. Vivid and Digital Playground are distant memories. Sites like OnlyFans \u2014 and competitors like JustForFans, Clips4Sale, and ManyVids \u2014 now rule the roost. And while that shift has empowered many performers to create careers that would have been unimaginable in earlier eras, it\u2019s also come with a cost. While some jobs, like broadcasting and distribution, are now handled by third-party platforms like OnlyFans, a great deal of the work that used to be handled by a studio is now the performers\u2019 responsibility. In addition, these new sites heavily encourage interaction with fans. The most successful creators aren\u2019t just turning out hot porn scenes. They\u2019re constantly chatting with their subscribers and creating custom scenes for high-paying clients. None of that was part of the job description in the VHS\/DVD eras, when performer-fan interaction was largely limited to quick exchanges at trade shows like the Adult Entertainment Expo.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re a top performer bringing in an enviable income, you might be able to hire a team of people to manage all the work you don\u2019t want, or don\u2019t have time, to do. But not everyone has the money to bring in outside editors and administrative assistants. For some of these creators, AI has become a crucial tool for tackling all the work required in the creator-centered adult industry.<\/p>\n
For Darling \u2014 a tech-savvy performer whose career has included pioneering work with VR cam platforms \u2014 the decision to explore AI\u2019s potential to optimize her workflow was a no-brainer. From the early days of ChatGPT, she\u2019s been exploring ways to make the platform work for her. Early on, she looked into the possibility of making her own AI chatbot by feeding ChatGPT her own writing samples from anonymized chats with clients in order to teach it her voice and style. While she didn\u2019t wind up with a convincing Elabot, she did manage to train ChatGPT to help her generate responses to client messages that are in her voice, providing assistance on days when she\u2019s creatively drained. \u201cIt lets me operate at 90 percent when I\u2019m at 30 percent,\u201d she says, helping her to conquer the massive pile of client messages that can be the most intimidating part of the job.<\/p>\n
Darling isn\u2019t alone in turning to LLMs for creative inspiration. Staying afloat in a crowded marketplace like OnlyFans requires constantly churning out new content, and creating custom photos and videos tailored to a variety of fan interests \u2014 interests that you, personally, might not know much about. Erika Amore<\/a>, who\u2019s been on OnlyFans since 2020, says that fans often request very niche content without providing much of a story or vision for their custom clips. \u201cI need some kind of creative component,\u201d she says \u2014 and ChatGPT can provide that, creating scripts and scenes and even shot lists for, say, a sexy giantess roleplay.<\/p>\n Of course, there are limits to what mainstream LLMs will allow, and most of the people I spoke with had run into warnings that they were asking a service to do something that would violate its TOS. OnlyFans creator Max Steele<\/a> has told ChatGPT that he needs sexual-sounding content because it\u2019s for an erotic scene in a play, or \u201cacademic psychology research.\u201d Amore has gotten sexts to send clients by asking for a response to \u201cflirty conversation via text with my boyfriend.\u201d Most creators found that, after a little training, ChatGPT would offer up sexual content with little resistance.<\/p>\n But there are also adult-specific LLMs popping up as well, like GPTease<\/a>, an AI chatbot by sex workers, for sex workers. Founded by longtime adult creator MelRose Michaels, GPTease promises to handle a wide array of behind-the-scenes work so that creators can maximize the amount of time they\u2019re spending in front of the camera (and thus making money). Although Michaels won\u2019t share her training data, she told me that GPTease wasn\u2019t trained on creator data \u2014 unless you count the data sets that she, as a creator, wrote herself. When I created a free trial account with GPTease, it asked me to tell it more about my specific content niche and type of client. From there, it was able to generate sexy DMs, shot lists, scripts for scenes, and more \u2014 and if I wanted, it could even give me suggested prices for everything I created. GPTease, Michaels says, was specifically built to meet a wide range of sex worker needs, and to support the community of creators that she is proud to be a part of.<\/p>\n Not that every adult creator is enthusiastic about bringing AI into their work. Mistress Lark<\/a>, an independent professional dominatrix working out of Hollywood, is generally an enthusiastic LLM fan. She\u2019s used ChatGPT to create calendars that map out her work schedule for an entire year. When she was moving her website off of Wix, Gemini provided her with much-needed advice and tutorials. And many of her newsletters and ad copy began as ChatGPT drafts. But when it comes to using it to shape her interactions with clients, she\u2019s more hesitant. \u201cI enjoy getting to know how people\u2019s brains work,\u201d she says. Outsourcing her end of the conversation to AI would make chatting with clients far less fulfilling.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also a larger, more existential concern when it comes to adult content and AI. While no one I talked to worried about chatbots and AI clones replacing flesh-and-blood adult models, \u201cmost of my clients are white-collar professionals,\u201d says Princess Fawn<\/a>, a fetish model and dominatrix. \u201cI\u2019m concerned that AI is going to potentially displace their work, and then they won\u2019t have the money to pay me.\u201d<\/p>\n