A number of leading NSFW AI image generators have been struck a blow after Patreon suspended accounts linked to AI porn. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, as the platform – which many of the top generators use to manage paid subscriptions – had made clear that AI generated porn was against their terms and conditions back in August of last year.
We clarified that we don’t allow human pornography, regardless of how the works were created. In other words, AI- or computer-generated pornography that looks human or lifelike is not permitted.
A number of porn tech sites, including many or most VR porn games, use Patreon to monetize their subscribers. It seems they have not been caught up in the wave of suspensions. This has led some to speculate that it’s the result of a growing hostility to AI porn, fueled by recent media stories. PornPen.ai, which may have been the very first online AI porn generation tool, has had its Patreon account terminated, and the developer behind the site gave his thoughts as to the possible reasons.
Hey HN, about a year ago I launched my AI porn site on Hacker News [1] and it reached the top of the front page. Initially, the site was free to use. I got a ton of traffic and was overwhelmed – I ended up shutting down the site. Dozens of users told me they would pay for the service, so I set up a Patreon and re-opened the site. Users could pay for “Pro mode” for additional benefits on the site, such as faster generations. It was a huge success and many people subscribed.
Fast forward a year later and I have since set up an alternative billing system. However, I still had about 5K subs on Patreon who did not switch. Just a few days ago, I got an email at 3AM [2] from Patreon: they shut down the site. I got no warning, they just deleted my page and cancelled all of my subscribers. AFAIK, they also haven’t refunded any of the cancelled subscribers. So someone could have paid a day before the ban, then Patreon deleted the page, and the user never got their money back.The reason was because “Due to updated credit card network guidelines, we are no longer able to support generative AI software that is focused on creating pornographic works. This is because this software can be used to create works that violate our guidelines on mature themes & pornography.” For context, Patreon’s previous terms said that pornography is allowed if it does not depict real people (i.e. art, comics, etc). AI porn was a grey area because although the content is photorealistic, the people are technically AI-generated.
My theory is that this ban was related to a controversy with another site called CivitAI. Recently, their cloud provider dropped them because CSAM and other unsafe content was generated on their site [3]. I have tried to avoid issues like this on my site by disabling free text prompting for image generation. Users have to choose from a set of preset, vetted tags. In addition, users cannot upload their own images to create deepfakes. I also have custom trained classifiers to detect unsafe content. And a human moderation team. I tried making AI porn as safe as possible, but it still wasn’t enough for the credit card companies or Patreon…
It does seem that this may be part of a wider crackdown on NSFW image generators, with Visa and Mastercard tightening their rules, and increasingly vocal calls for legislators to take a firmer line on their regulation. Whether it is related or not to this crackdown, AI porn received another blow when one of the most popular and highly regarded generators Soulgen were hit recently with payment processor problems. Members of the site no longer have any prompt tags to choose from, and any attempts to use any sexual words in the custom prompt box returns an ‘inappropriate usage’ warning. Perhaps Soulgen are just playing it cautiously as they strive to adhere to their new payment processor’s terms and conditions, and we may see a more NSFW form of the site again soon.
