Jan Stasieńko

The dynamic development of generative artificial intelligence systems constructing textual visual and audio content based on prompts (queries, descriptions, and tags) raises numerous questions regarding issues such as creative autonomy, the impact of automation on art generation processes, the value of typically human creativity, the scope of copyright, and intellectual property rights. Automatically generated texts, images, and sounds prompt experimentation and evoke both fascination and dread. In the article, I would like to focus on the impact of such tools on the realm of pornography. In the era of platforms based on systems like DALL-E, Midjourney, or Stable Diffusion, which typically censor erotic and pornographic content, the automatic creation of images depicting explicit sexual scenes primarily occurs through dedicated and increasingly numerous services such as Pornpen.ai, Promptchan.ai, PornX.ai, PornWorks.ai, PornJoy.ai, and others. The text will illustrate what types of technologies and cultural practices historically led to the emergence of AI pornographic services and to what extent existing theoretical concepts about pornography fit the description and interpretation of such phenomena. I will also highlight the current offerings of such services regarding their functionalities and capabilities for generating pornographic content. A significant portion of the article will analyze selected samples of Pornpen.ai content. The perception of images generated with the involvement of artificial intelligence scripts using this platform evokes a specific sense of otherness in both their aesthetic and narrative layers. This kind of new “uncanny valley” and those human-nonhuman narrative dynamics around sexuality will be the subject of my reflection in the final part of the discourse.

The face seems to be a category that should take a very important and special place in posthuman thought. It is in fact the battlefield between various forces and is the result of biological components, affects, technology and biotechnology, screens and communication codes. The reflection on the face that has already begun from Deleuze and Guattari, which detaches it from the human subject, undermines its status as an emblem of humanity and shows it as the intersection of various types of tension and dynamics, finds its practical expression in current technological reality. Facial imaging technologies in film CGI, specialized methods of face-tracking and analysis using artificial intelligence algorithms, fusions of human and inhuman faces in artistic and commercial projects, and finally the face as an important element of robotics, all these areas show this category as a real field of experiment and designing practices in the visual layer. The face thus appears as a critical category, inclining to ask questions about the veracity of her image, its integrity, property rights to her, and communication potential. The aim of the article will be an attempt to build a map of face design practices in post-digital media reality and answer the question about its very complex and defying contemporary status.