OnlyFans, AI girlfriends and ‘stepdads’: the porn industry in 2025

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:07Today, we take a trip to Europe's biggest porn conference.

0:17A quick warning before we start. Unsurprisingly, given the subject matter, this episode contains discussion of some distinctly adult themes as well as some strong language.

0:30Earlier this month, in the heart of Amsterdam, Guardian reporter Amelia Gentleman found herself at a rather unusual conference.

0:42So I went to the ex-biz adult industry conference and it was really an extraordinary scene. Around a thousand content creators from around Europe had turned up to the Hotel Jakarta. Over three days at a smart four-star hotel, the great and the good of the sex industry met, mingled and mulled over how to adapt their offerings to the fast-changing porn landscape. What do you recommend first-timers to Amsterdam do? I recommend that they go to all the seminars they can go to because you learn so much. The content creators were learning how to deal with new requirements for age verification, but they were also learning about changing trends in body types, in pornography, how to earn more money by offering more personalised services.

1:38Quality and consistency over quantity. Again, you will lose more points in general with the algorithm if you post 50 things that not everybody clicks through on or doesn't watch all the way. There was a lot of discussion of what is fashionable at the moment in the adult industry. So tentacles are very big. The other ponters at the hotel didn't know what had hit them. A lot of the content creators were just in jeans and trainers, not wearing any makeup. But some of them were in nine-inch diamante heels. Some of them were on roller skates with flashing wheels. When all of the women were arriving and checking in for the conference, A group of Americans were arriving for a tulips and windmills tour of Amsterdam.

2:28And yeah, there was a lot of bemusement, I think. XBiz runs a number of conferences like this every year, all aimed at helping content creators make the most out of their industry. But behind the glitz, the glamour and the tentacles lie big questions about the future of porn.

2:53From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pitt. Today in Focus. In the age of only fans and AI girlfriends, who are the winners in the world of porn?

3:07So Amelia, you decided to go to Amsterdam to what sounds like quite an extraordinary conference. But it wasn't actually the first time that you've been to this gathering, was it? So I went to an experts conference just over a decade ago in London in a really depressing hotel in a windowless basement. And then there was an atmosphere of total gloom within the industry because all of the owners of adult companies were very concerned that the arrival of streaming of pornography online, the arrival of sites like Pornhub had totally destroyed the business model. and that there wasn't very much money to be made in the industry.

3:50And this time round, I mean, in just 11 years since you attended that first conference, the industry's changed almost beyond recognition. Yeah, there's been a hugely radical shift in that decade. We've seen a completely new way for the pornography industry to monetize itself. Yeah, and there is so much money to be made because more and more people are watching porn. There was a YouGov survey two years ago which found that half of all British men watch porn, 15 % of women, including no doubt many listeners of this podcast. And many of them are watching via a relatively new player in the industry, OnlyFans.

4:28Tell me about them. OnlyFans began in 2016 in the kitchen of an Essex-based family, the Stokely family. Initially, it was a new social media site that allowed people to upload videos of their hobbies. So sometimes it was cooking. We saw a lot of people doing gardening videos. But nowadays, it is overwhelmingly explicit content. OnlyFans has changed the business model of being naked online. Now, the company wants to build a different kind of social media platform. One that's not reliant on advertising and personalised algorithms. This is a model whereby customers can follow individual performers and pay monthly subscriptions.

5:17They then get a certain amount of explicit content, photographs, videos from the creator. And give us a sense just how big OnlyFans has become. I mean, I read an incredible fact earlier this year saying that OnlyFans contributes more to British GDP than the entire British fishing industry. OnlyFans has grown remarkably rapidly since it came onto the market in 2016. It's currently thought to be worth$8 billion. The number of people who are producing content for OnlyFans has doubled in the space of three years from 2 million to over 4 million. And the users are increasing. There are currently over 377 million OnlyFans user accounts globally.

6:05So it's a huge, completely new business model, which has brought a certain amount of optimism to the adult industry. And it's also seen a complete shift in where the power lies within the industry. scam. Back in January 2020, I started my OnlyFans account. I soon began to make about 15k monthly on the platform with a grand total of over$200 ,000 made within the last two to three years. Yeah, I mean, I guess it's OnlyFans admirers would say that it's democratized porn, it empowers women because it gives them much more control over their content and it allows them to keep a much larger percentage of the money that they charge for making.

6:46I think they don't they get 80 % I think? That's right. A lot of the women involved in creating the content now will say that the whole industry has shifted in their favor. So that previously, a decade ago, 20 years ago, most of the power lay in the hands of the mostly men who owned the studios, who recruited the women to come and work, who auditioned and cast women. But now there's been a dramatic shift towards women because they are getting 80 % of the revenues for whatever they produce for OnlyFans. And also they're responsible for saying what they want to do, what they won't do, deciding how much they want to work.

7:29It's a kind of gig economy. It's like being an Uber driver. You clock on when you want to, you clock off when you want to. And the argument goes that that is more empowering for women. And I suppose I went to the conference to try and understand where the power really lies and is it really empowering for those women who have chosen this line of work.

7:57So you went to this conference in Amsterdam, which was crawling with, dripping with porn stars, many of them OnlyFans creators. Tell me about some of them. I spoke to a lot of women whilst I was there, all of whom were incredibly upbeat about the work that they were doing. I spoke to Callie Kingsley, who's a 23-year-old woman from Hertfordshire, who gave up a job working in the Formula One industry to do OnlyFans full-time.

8:26Amelia Gentleman:People think that you come from a bad background or it's kind of a seedy industry. but actually a lot of us are professionals and we've gone on this route because we are professionals because we see where the money's being made and we realise where there's a gap in the market and we take that jump. Callie Kingsley said it was completely a generational thing that as somebody who'd grown up with an iPhone taking pictures of herself in her bikini, in her underwear sexting with boyfriends it wasn't a huge leap to go into OnlyFans. And she said it's only the older generation who views this as in any way sensitive or a taboo.

9:10Amelia Gentleman:Every girl takes photos and feels good in pretty lingerie and things like that. And then when you find out that you can actually make money from it, for me anyway, it was like, well, I'm doing it anyway. And I'd rather be in control of where my photos are going rather than send them to random guys and you don't know where they're going or boyfriends and then you break up. So I was in control and that was a huge part of it for me. And if she was working in Formula One, that sounds like a dream industry for many people to work in. Was she just saying that she's earning a lot more money doing OnlyFans?

9:48So I think the thing is that there are some people, and Kylie Kingsley is probably one of them, for whom this business model really works. If you're prepared to put the hours in, there's a minority of women who do make a lot of money out of it. But analysts have looked at the income distribution for OnlyFans creators. And it seems clear that there's a kind of 1 % where women are making money, but a very, very long tail beyond that of people for whom it isn't necessarily a particularly lucrative way to earn a living. I also spoke to a woman called Ariel Tiefling, who is in her mid-twenties from Spain.

10:31She's somebody who worked in the IT industry before deciding to start work for OnlyFans full time. And she said that she had gone into it because her salary in the IT industry was very low, that after she paid her rent, after she paid her bills, bought food, she was left with really not very much money at all and realised that she could make a more reliable income by doing OnlyFans. But if you go to a normal workplace there is not much dignity for the younger generations because you're earning very little money and you pay your rent and you pay your food and you run out of money. And that is not dignity because you cannot choose to have a bigger house to have a family.

11:17Like if you want to have one, two, three kids, you can't. She was actually much more straightforward than a lot of the women I spoke to in saying that her decision was really the response to a quite bleak situation for her generation coming out of school and college in Spain. And so for her, it really was an acknowledgement that she didn't think that her options financially elsewhere were good enough. And that's why she swapped to OnlyFans. It's not that it's easier with this one, but I feel like I can go and get the house that I want and live in the place that I feel safe in. And I feel like that is way more dignifying than working so many hours.

12:02And you can be fired like that. She also talked about the real sense of pressure she felt under to produce a lot of content all the time. She says it's not easy. She says that there's an idea that making money on OnlyFans is just a question of taking your clothes off, of having no inhibitions and being happy about being nude on camera. But actually it isn't. It's a lot more difficult and it requires long hours and a lot of actually quite exhausting work. She was quite ill when I met her and said she was suffering from burnout.

12:48Is there a risk with these content creators because of the pressure to be churning out content in a pretty saturated market that there is a temptation to be doing ever more extreme things and that simply posting a picture of yourself in a nice bra and pants is not enough anymore and even just maybe having sex with one person on camera isn't enough? Yeah I mean that's That's right. I met Lily Phillips, who is one of the more famous OnlyFans creators in the UK, who became famous at the end of last year when she had sex with 100 men on film as part of a stunt for OnlyFans. Lily Phillips, a 23-year-old OnlyFans star living in London who describes herself as an English c**t, was planning on hosting an event where she would sleep with 100 of her fans in a single day.

13:38and I think there is a real pressure that the business model puts on women to do more extreme things in order to get known to become famous to attract subscribers and then also to keep the subscribers and it was such a big deal just last year when Lily Phillips did that stunt but she's been thoroughly eclipsed really hasn't she by other content creators notably Bonnie Blue many listeners might have watched the Channel 4 documentary about her when she's trying to have sex with a thousand men in a day and even that isn't enough then she has to say well I'm going to try and have sex with x number of virgins so it does seem that people are being pushed towards ever more extreme material.

14:21Yeah that's right and there's obviously an inherent risk in some of these stunts which are portrayed as empowering for the women who are performing them. But an Australian OnlyFans creator was hospitalized earlier this year after she filmed a challenge where she had sex with 583 men in one day and was taken to hospital with exhaustion. She said, I think my body just finally had enough. You mentioned Lily Phillips already. You actually met her, didn't you, at the conference? I wonder what did she have to say about where she thinks the power lies in the industry? Lily Phillips argues that she's in control of her own destiny, that she's making her own decisions, that she is making money in a way that she sees as entirely empowering.

15:11Amelia Gentleman:I personally think it's creators like me who kind of hold the power in this instant. I mean, we've really took it back, you know. We've cut out the middleman and it is just purely us coming up with content we want to make and producing that. So she's adamant that OnlyFans works for her. But does she think that more women should follow her lead? Lily Phillips was cautious about recommending the work to other women. She said that people should think about it before going into it. She acknowledged that it's a huge commitment, that it has an impact on relationships, on your relationship with your family and your friends.

15:46Amelia Gentleman:I've 110 % always said think about it a while. You know, it's a big commitment. It affects every aspect of your life. Yeah, it is huge and will affect your life for the rest of your life. What is she like to talk to? Were you convinced by what she was telling you? Lily Phillips was tremendously smiley, friendly, agreeable and upbeat about the work that she is doing. I suppose I found it very difficult meeting woman after woman after woman who told me that the work was positive and a very straightforward way to make money. And I suppose I've got a kind of lingering sense of scepticism about whether or not that really is the case.

16:35But I mean, why can't you just believe what they're saying? Why can't you believe that maybe it is much better than doing a dead-end minimum wage job, that they choose their hours. They only put out content that they have approved and they're taking a big cut of all of the money that they make. So I think absolutely for a percentage of women who do OnlyFans work, it is lucrative. People have described making millions in a relatively short period of time. But I think you have to scratch away at how common those experiences are. And I think the thing that I found really disconcerting, I suppose, about the conference is the real mismatch between the very benign sort of content that most of the women were talking about.

17:32And then the content that you see on sites like Pornhub that don't have a paywall, so you can see them once you've gone through age verification very, very swiftly. And they portray a kind of pornography that's completely different, often very violent, very misogynistic, showing a lot of disturbing content around fantasy, incest and borderline illegal kind of hinting at child sex abuse material. So I suppose what I'm trying to say is that there was a very sanitised picture of the industry being promoted. But I think you have to kind of keep an eye on the wider nature of their business.

18:30You actually met one of the most important figures at Pornhub, didn't you? Tell me about that. Yeah, Alex Kekesis, Pornhub's vice president of community and brand, who was given a presentation about Pornhub and about regulatory issues and talking really in a very reassuring way, telling creators not to worry that the business model will continue to be lucrative. And I suppose I was quite confused by, again, the disconnect between what she was talking about and the content on their website, the way that the content is advertised to users is really misogynistic. So I actually can't quote a lot of it because it's, I think, too much probably for the podcast.

19:19But some of the videos have titles that kind of make a nod to incest and they're allowed to do that by putting the word step into it so that that pushes it from being illegal to acceptable because if you put step daddy instead of just father, it allows you to get around the regulations. I hope you warned the Guardian's IT department before you went on this Googling mission, otherwise they're going to have some questions for you. I had to have a special unlock on my work laptop to allow me to look temporarily. And when you spoke about what you had found on her site, how did that go? I felt like I was being told off by her, really, because I asked whether she felt that the content I've just described is empowering for women and whether or not she felt that the violence was problematic.

20:15And she said what's empowering for some people is not the same for everyone. And she said something that might feel very violent for me or for you is someone else's good time. she also explained that there is a fundamental difference between incest in pornography and the portrayal of step incest which comes into the category of fantasy i think she was pretty defensive there's a couple of things here i think it's really important to distinguish the fact that like what feels really empowering for some people is not the same for everyone right um we do have a very strict code of conduct and a very strict set of community guidelines that governs what kind of content is accessible on our site so you said that there's incest content if that's the truth please tell me personally it's and it's step incest right so that's not incest that's fantasy um so that is permitted on the site something that might feel very violent for me or for you for someone else is is a good time right and i know that and did you have anything to say about the common criticism of pornography, particularly extreme pornography, that it normalises sexual practices that are in fact not normal and are actually unhealthy.

21:29And they make particularly teenage boys think, for example, it's completely normal to choke your partner during sex, to do degrading things. I mean, let alone incest. We didn't have a conversation about that. But the Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation is very clear that in something like 94 % of scenes in pornographic content, women are the targets of both physical and verbal aggression. And most of the time, the aggressors are men. So it's kind of important to separate the happy time that everybody was having with the really bleak and often violent content that a lot of people are consuming.

22:12Gemma Kelly, the head of policy at CIS, says OnlyFans follows the same logic as any form of commercial sexual exploitation. She told me that there'll always be a small percentage of women who feel like this is working for them as a chosen career path. But it's the 90 % of women who we don't see who are the ones who are the most exploited, and they're the most vulnerable. And they're certainly not the people who will be traveling to Amsterdam to go to a conference for three days. And at the end of your three days in Amsterdam, it sounds like you were struggling with this onslaught of relentless positivity.

22:50I wonder whether you changed your mind about anything while you were there? Yeah, I mean, I really liked all of the women who I met. And I wanted to agree with them that their work was empowering and dignified. And I think, who am I to disagree with them? I I mean, they articulated a kind of work that they felt that they were earning well from and that they were setting themselves up for future life by doing this work. I don't know, though, that I really changed my mind about where the power lies within the business as a whole and about whether or not it's an exploitative industry to go into. It's complicated and clearly in many ways OnlyFans does give you a real palpable level of independence and you can stop filming if you want to stop filming.

23:48But it's a very extreme gig economy that makes you have to hustle for fans and it pushes women to produce often more and more extreme content.

24:04Coming up, how AI is transforming the porn industry.

24:20Amelia, one porn conference in one month wasn't enough for you. You went to a second one in Prague in the Czech Republic to find out more about how artificial intelligence, how AI is disrupting the industry. Tell me about going there and what you found out. I went to the TES conference in Prague. It's absolutely packed. There are hundreds of delegates pouring out of the hotel, drinking cocktails, listening to the steel drums and watching the Brazilian dancers outside the entrance to the hotel. It was a very, very different vibe, very tech bro in atmosphere and a lot of emerging AI adult industry content producers.

25:05So companies that are making completely new form of pornography. I saw a lot of organizations that are trying to make money out of creating AI girlfriends, which is kind of a euphemism for AI bots who will take their clothes off and perform explicit acts, but completely without the involvement of any human. It's a bit like a kind of evolution of playing video games for teenagers. And the technology is good enough so far that you can get up to about six seconds, but not beyond. But it's getting faster very quickly. And they think it will be just a matter of months before you can have hour long capacity for AI content.

25:48Which is good or bad, depending on how you look at it. Bad, I guess, if you're a woman whose work gets taken away. good if it means that women don't have to, in some people's views, degrade themselves by doing this kind of work? I mean, it really, really puzzled me because in Amsterdam, the narrative was entirely that this work isn't degrading, it's empowering. And then suddenly, when you meet people who are in the business of producing AI pornography, there's a sudden kind of shift about the risks involved in the industry and it becomes very paradoxical and hard to understand because they start saying well the thing is actually the industry is very risky for women it can be degrading and by creating AI models we are removing from women the need to do this unsafe humiliating work and we can do it in a much more ethical way and I found those conversations very puzzling.