Something strange is happening on ManyVids, an OnlyFans-style porn site that allows users to upload and distribute their material to subscribers. 404 Media reports that the company’s official account has, for the last six months or so, seemingly succumbed to “AI psychosis,” going from promoting creators and content to posting long, rambling musings about metaphysics, aliens, and apparent plans for restructuring the entire adult content industry in ways that no one seems to really understand.
You can get a feel for what ManyVids has been up to by checking out its X account, where a few of these seemingly AI-generated ideas were shared before ManyVids seemingly cut off the account sometime in October of last year. For instance, the account posted a flow chart explaining what it called “Adult Industry 2.0,” which starts with safe-for-work content that ultimately leads people into NSFW and what it calls “NSFWx” content, which requires the viewer to be 21 or older to view. There’s no real explanation for how this model would change the adult industry, and it appears to have been taken in whole from a ChatGPT response to an unknown prompt.
While that content has stopped appearing on X, 404 Media found that it has continued on the ManyVids platform, which has a newsfeed for creators and subscribers. There, the official ManyVids account has grown more unhinged. It’s made posts about how AI will eventually lead to “High Universal Income.” Other posts talk about angel numbers and chakras. Another shared an image of CEO Bella French in a space suit, shooting lightning out of her eyes like they are lasers.
According to 404 Media, ManyVids creators are not exactly comforted by their apparent AI overlord. Some find the posts bizarre, others find them to be completely inappropriate, and they make them feel like the platform doesn’t take its creators seriously.
It has also led some of them to question what French’s true motivations are—questions that have only been further bolstered by her recent shift in language on her personal website. As 404 Media noted, French’s website used to talk about how the goal of ManyVids was to give sex workers more control over their content and protect them from the exploitative and harmful practices of the adult industry. That has been removed from a more recent version, which now talks about how the platform’s goal is to “transition one million people out of the adult industry and do everything we can to ensure no one new enters it.”
Whatever your opinion of sex work may be, it is the product of a capitalistic system that enables and encourages the commodification of everything, including bodies. Sex work, like all work, is a product of the exploitative nature of that system. ManyVids is not solving capitalism. So the choice of the CEO to want to transition creators out of sex work amounts to a moral judgment—the kind from which the platform previously promised its creators freedom.
It’s not clear if ManyVids’ new direction is a true pivot from French or if it’s all AI slop that French has simply adopted. But it is clear that it doesn’t sit right with creators who trusted their content to the platform. And it doesn’t really appear like ManyVids is walking the walk to go along with talking the talk. As an adult content creator pointed out on X, while ManyVids’ CEO is talking about keeping people from entering sex work, the platform is promoting bonuses to encourage new creators to join.
Gizmodo reached out to ManyVids for comment, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
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