Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming adult content production by enabling users to generate highly customized sexual media through AI pornography platforms. Despite growing concerns about risks (e.g. illegal material generation and sex worker exploitation), AI pornography platform governance remains largely undocumented. We conceptualize AI pornography governance as fantasy arbitration, the process by which platforms determine which sexual fantasies can be technologically instantiated. Using an inductive content analysis of governance materials from 98 AI pornography platforms, we examine content prohibitions, moderation strategies and enforcement mechanisms, liability allocation, intellectual property rights, and privacy policies. Findings reveal heterogeneous governance regimes that create differential risk environments and illuminate how platforms independently dictate legitimate sexuality, determine who captures value from content generation, and commodify intimate data. Collectively, these governance practices position AI pornography platforms as corporate arbiters of sexual possibilities, with broader implications for intimate freedom, labor exploitation, and our co-evolution with technologies.
Lapointe et al. (Mon,) studied this question.