Customers sue OnlyFans—thought they were talking with a person, not a bot
As adult content creators rely more and more on artificial intelligence systems to match their fans’ equally rising demands, a recent class action lawsuit reveals a dark side to this arrangement: that there’s a big difference between using AI to help make their customers happy instead of flat out deceiving them.
As reported by Court Watch in collaboration with 404 Media, Illinois residents IM. Brunner and J. Fry are suing OnlyFans—the popular live-streaming platform—for an undisclosed amount.
The plaintiffs claim the performers they’d subscribed to couldn’t have been authentic. They became suspicious after “realizing that a single individual could not send the number of direct messages or videos that generating revenue from 700,000 fans, in one creators’ case, would require.”
Nothing up my sleeve
While the plaintiffs haven’t yet provided actual evidence that they were intentionally tricked into conversing with some form of AI, they described some relatively well-known chatbot tells, specifically “contradicting information and errors” in the messages they’d received.
The suit expressly claims OnlyFans duped Brunner and Fry, in the process violating the terms of their customer agreement, disappointing “the reasonable expectations of Plaintiffs and Class Members, thereby depriving them of the benefit of their bargain.”
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As of this date, OnlyFans has not responded to 404 Media’s inquiries but referenced a 2024 Cosmopolitan article in which a spokesperson for the platform stated, “Creators may choose to work with a wide range of third parties, including photographers, videographers, talent managers and agencies, to curate and monetise their content.”
To put it even more succinctly, “Any third party that a creator elects to work with does not work on behalf of OnlyFans and is not affiliated with the company in any way.”
Take a card, any card
In contrast to Brunner and Fry’s allegations of being duped, cam performer Chloe Amour, who licensed her physical likeness and on-screen persona to an AI company, was transparent about the arrangement.
She said it was to make her life easier as well as satisfy her fans, “Sometimes there are things that they want to talk about with me, or there are things that they want from me that I might not be able to give them.”
If Brunner and Fry’s suit does have merit, it could be yet another unfortunate sign that AI users and developers are woefully, or worse, willingly ignorant of how vitally important informed consent should and must be.
A good example is the unauthorized use of everything from books to films in training Large Language Models, which has led to not one, not two, but nearly forty—and counting—separate lawsuits, as noted by The Copyright Alliance.
Abracadabra
Though AI image generation software built from authorized media, such as Chloe Amour’s digitized self, may remain controversial, at least consumers can know what it is and where it came fromand decide whether or not to use it.
Should Brunner and Fry be proven correct, the case could become a crucial benchmark clearly establishing where human adult content creators end and their use of chatbots and their like begin.
In fact, it’s more than somewhat surprising we haven’t seen similar suits. This might be either because AI assistants are just that good, cam show fans don’t care, or don’t care enough to go to court over them—yet!
Watch me pull a rabbit
If Brunner and Fry’s suit is found in their favor, if the live adult entertainment industry takes notice, if platforms like OnlyFans realize they have to step up, if everyone finally gets why informed consent isn’t just a nice idea but essential, then fingers crossed, we wouldn’t have to worry about being tricked.
Rather, we’d know from the get-go whether we’d be interacting with a person or a bot, and the same would be true for being informed right up front if anything is AI-generated or not.
Lawsuits may not be what gets us there, nor will raising our voices in protest, but what is certain is if we don’t do something, anything, and soon, duplicitous AI practices will become the norm—and consent tragically a thing of the past.
Image Sources: Depositphotos
