Demand for sex doll erotica surges at adult social networking site.
As user interest in sex doll videos rises, adult tube site xHamster [NSFW] has big plans to push deeper into the field. The move follows a reported 97% increase in searches for videos with sex dolls during 2017 on the platform, which mainly features amateur user-uploaded videos.
Speaking to Future of Sex, xHamster Vice President Alex Hawkins shared more on this trend and how the company plans to respond.
Sex doll personalities based on user preferences
“We have thousands of videos of users having sex with dolls or sex robots. There’s been tremendous growth in this space, and we’ve been investigating ways in which we might further use our data to create more realistic companions,” Hawkins said.
Already xHamster sells its own sex doll named xHamsterina, which was designed based on crowdsourced user feedback and the overall viewing habits of its users. xHamsterina launched last summer and was built in partnership with Italian company iDoll.
AVN also reported in January that xHamster is seeking out love doll companies to work with in order to find and sign a doll as its “first exclusive contract star.”
This year xHamster began exploring the idea of developing sex doll personalities also based on users’ viewing habits. For example, trends found in videos most watched or favorited by users could influence the creation of different personas and characteristics.
While some xHamster viewers may have privacy concerns about this approach, it could benefit people who have trouble expressing their desires.
“We know that people have difficulty articulating what they want sexually, either because they are embarrassed or don’t have the words to do it. We think there may be ways to use AI to make dolls fully responsive to a user’s needs. In effect, make them mind-readers,” Hawkins said.
Facial recognition technology
xHamster has also been building facial recognition systems, but this is not only for the sake of combating and removing revenge porn or copyright content. The company aims to make it easier for users to identify a performer or ones similar to their favorites.
Turning a negative into a positive, Hawkins also has intriguing ideas on how the site could harness AI technology used to create “deepfakes.”
“We’ve seen a lot of news and outrage lately about ‘deep fakes’ where someone visually grafts a celebrity’s head onto a performers body, without their consent. While that’s something we need to fight, what if the same technology could be used to create consensually driven content? As it relates to dolls, is there a way to create a version of the doll that exists in video form as well— essentially, a dollfake?” he added.
But according to Hawkins, hopes for xHamster’s facial recognition and AI systems go even further.
“They could be used to design custom porn that can, in fact, design the perfect man or woman.”
Image sources: xHamster [NSFW]
