Pornography is a multi-million-dollar, or multi-billion-dollar industry, depending on your source. And the industry is undergoing substantial changes. No longer will the old VHS, DVD or on-line formats be used to distribute adult entertainment materials. Virtual reality, as well as augmented reality, will enable the consumer to bring the content into their home in a digitized format that will provide a constant library of materials. Everything will be suited to their specific wishes, thanks to artificial intelligence.
Estimates of the entertainment industry’s overall reach, in terms of virtual reality, by 2025, excluding hardware, are that all aspects will achieve $5.4 billion in sales. The hardware is estimated to add $62 billion with at least 500 million headsets being sold in 2025.
Current active users of VR worldwide were estimated, as of 2018, to be about 171 million individuals with 16 million identifying as gamers. As the software catalogs increase and the price of hardware decreases, it is anticipated that the market reach will improve exponentially.
The competition for virtual reality or augmented reality, not in the adult entertainment industry, is formidable. Facebook, Google, and Apple are leading players in the field with a market cap of about $1.4 trillion.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, in a presentation at a Chinese university, said, “When everyone is using mobile phones, I believe the next platform will be virtual reality. Oculus is the first product, but we hope there will be many products.”
Enter the adult entertainment industry
The late Steve Jobs underscored the potential for the pornography market on the Internet as well as on phones. In a presentation, he indicated, “You know, there’s a porn store for Android (Mikandi)… Anyone can download them. You can. Your kids can. That’s not just a place we want to go.”
After Jobs made the statement and mentioned the name of the store, 10,000 people downloaded that store’s program onto their Android phones in the next 12 hours. Mikandi had ten times the usual number of download traffic to the store, which promptly saw its activity tripled.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is running algorithm viewings of thousands of hours of video materials from the pornography industry to tag individual performers, situations, environments, or film genres. The end product will provide viewers a selection of materials that fit their particular wishes. It will revolutionize the industry and in doing so will enable it to push its financial gains astronomically.
The profitability of this industry operates on low-cost productions that pay actors little more than $500 for males and less for females. Specific situations may increase the fees demanded by the actors, but the industry produces few millionaires resulting from their performances.
The adult entertainment consumer will find that not only will their visual wishes be satisfied. Their thirst for new forms of digitized content will be incorporated into new features. The new features will far outweigh their old porn library materials.
Ultimately, they may be able to produce their own, home-grown VR or AR materials. The content can be created to satisfy a variety of sensual experiences, including those of taste, touch, and scents.
New ventures into AR/VR
The growth of adult entertainment, according to one website, Pornhub, has been nothing less than phenomenal. They have seen an increase of 275% in their viewership since they debuted in the summer of 2016. The site is now averaging 500,000 views a day.
New forms of digital environments, including the possibility of additional hardware, will enable these films to incorporate smell, taste, and touch into their technology. Both Facebook and Elon Musk’s Neuralink have looked at implants into the brain, which could provide some of this additional stimulation.
Facebook is also indicating that they are looking into noninvasive forms of providing increased sensations into and possibilities for AR programs. They bought a financial interest in developing AR controlled with brain activity.
Facebook Vice President of AR/VR Andrew “Boz” Bosworth said in a Facebook post: “Here’s how it’ll work: You have neurons in your spinal cord that send electrical signals to your hand muscles telling them to move in specific ways such as to click a mouse or press a button. The wristband will decode those signals and translate them into a digital signal your device can understand, empowering you with control over your digital life. It captures your intention so you can share a photo with a friend using an imperceptible movement or just by, well, intending to.”
One additional aspect of interest for any entertainment, adult or other, is in the area of senses. The possibility of what is known as sense-manipulating technology presents new opportunities for adult entertainment. There may even be applications that will be able to improve mood through scents and tastes according to researchers working in the field. The tactile feeling would be one of the senses most highly prized by those in the industry.
One company utilized research from a government-sponsored technology group, DARPA (Defense Advance Research Projects Agency). SynTouch focuses on five different sensations of touch; texture, compliance, friction, adhesive, and thermal in their products. The government-funded project provided a sense of touch to people with robo limbs.
Oculus (owned by Facebook) is a partner of SynTouch. SynTouch will concentrate on simulating how given texture and temperature humans would feel in sensations of touch. The current system, as they described it, will measure indicators that provide feedback to the user. The information would then be used to improve the system.
Facebook has also agreed to acquire CTRL-labs for between $500 million and $1 billion. CTRL-labs are deeply involved in non-invasive neural interfaces and could be integrated into Facebook glasses.
DIY may be possible
Amateurs wishing to flex their creative muscles may, with some degree of personal investment, be able to create their porn VR content. Two companies, Ricoh Theta, and VSN sell 360-degree cameras, a requirement for VR content.
Once an individual has produced the content or has downloaded content from the many websites that offer it, it can be played on a PSVR. The gaming console has been “hacked” and readily available for content it never anticipated.
The future of porn and its place in VR/AR and Mixed Reality is undoubtedly bright with new applications and platforms coming in the future. The Pornhub network already has 100 million visitors a day. The industry is estimated globally to be a $97 billion industry with $12 billion coming from the US.