Want to know who that mystery porn star is from a single image?
Artificial Intelligence is a field of advanced technology that can be found in many areas of modern life; most notably in our use of personal assistants like Siri, Alexa and Cortana. Capable of far faster and more superior search technology, machine learning is also being applied to the way we look for adult content online and can even be used to identify porn stars from obscure images. Using neural networks and facial recognition, could A.I. porn search engines really help us find what we’re looking for?
In this guide we take a closer look at the application of artificial intelligence when searching for online porn including some background on how this technology works, other applications for its use and the future of A.I. in porn.
Why Do We Need Search Engines with Artificial Intelligence?
Searching for any content online has become infinitely more difficult as the amount of material increases. It’s a catch-22 situation; there’s never been more porn available to watch online yet finding the clips you want has only become harder.
This is particularly true of user-submitted content to tube sites like Pornhub, YouPorn and XVideos. Members on the site don’t always obey the accepted etiquette about tagging their clips and/or are too lazy to attach more than a handful of keywords….often the same ones; ‘big tits’, ‘cumshot’, ‘anal’ etc. The result is that many of these sites are fast becoming vast dumping grounds for quality content which is just badly categorized and, in many cases, duplicated.
It’s a bit like trying to find a needle in a haystack, so how can search engines help us find what we are looking for or, better still, predict what we want to see.
Well, search engines have always been the gateway to the cornucopia of online content and their algorithms have to continually evolve in order to ensure that their results are not only relevant but meaningful.
In recent years, search engines have also had to adapt the ways in they can offer users a means of querying the internet. The rise of voice-enabled searches using apps, smart devices and personal assistants like Siri, Alexa and Cortana has underlined the need for more adaptive technology.
Not only that but the trend towards image searches is also on the increase.
These conditions of rising volumes of ill-curated content and a change in how we want to access it has opened the door for the next generation of search engines driven by artificial intelligence.
These tools don’t draw the same attention or controversy as AI porn generators, but they are arguably just as useful.
What is an A.I. Porn Search Engine?
Artificial Intelligence, or machine learning, is an advanced form of digital technology that covers a wide field of applications. It can already be seen in use from email filtering and fraud detection to voice recognition software like that which powers digital assistants like Siri and Alexa.
There are two main ways that A.I. is helping the porn industry in terms of search engines. The first is via the deployment of software that is capable of identifying target content using face recognition and a model based on superior tagging criteria. In simple terms, a search engine that doesn’t solely look at the ‘keywords’ that have been used to ‘tag’ the content by whoever has uploaded it but actually identifies the performers, and even the action, in the content itself.
That’s right, those boffins over at Pornhub have developed an advanced A.I. model which is helping to better curate its 10.8 million videos. So, whilst the uploader of a clip may have only identified two of the four performers, the search engine’s at Pornhub are actually scanning all files to match additional models.
This kind of system has been in use since 2017 and the same model is also being used to identify other elements of the scenes being uploaded from location and sexual positions to whether or not a file is a duplicate of another identical scene on the site. The result is a far better experience for users.
The second way that A.I. is helping porn fans is using the same method of face recognition but applying it to reverse image searching. In much the same way as Google allows you to upload an image from your PC or enter a URL of an existing web .jpeg (or similar) in order to search the internet there are now specific porn search engines that can offer the same technology.
This is great news for porn fans who want to identify a performer and find more content they have produced. With the proliferation of so much pirated material online it can be difficult to trace the original source of your favorite GIF, clip or still.
This method works best if you use a full face photo and the higher the quality the better the results. The system then detects facial patterns and compares these with its database of adult stars to find close matches. The results do vary and some search engines will offer multiple suggestions whilst others will only be able to come up with one or two matches. So, whilst these deep neural networks aren’t 100% accurate they do offer a great way to be able to identify mystery porn performers.
Best A.I. Porn Search Engines
We’ve mentioned above that the likes of Pornhub are already utilizing A.I. and facial recognition to enhance its customer experience but which sites can you use to identify adult performers from just a single photograph?
See more: How to find any porn star (AdultVisor’s source finding guide!)
Porn Star By Face
Using deep neural networks, Porn Star by Face was the first face-recognizing search engine to help identify adult performers, cam girls and nude babes from images.
The site receives around 1.3 million hits a month and is being used across United States, Canada, and South America as well as being popular in Germany and Russia.
Using information gathered from Pornhub, YouPorn, LiveJasmin and Joyourself, there are currently around 4,000 porn stars and web girls on their database.
Still in beta version, new girls are added to the system each week and further developments are regularly made to enhance the reliability of the results returned.
The site’s owners are also responsible for the celebrity face ID site, Star By Face.
The AI technology learns from every upload so the system will only improve the more that people use it. We tried it with some well-known porn stars and got 100% match results but the system was less accurate with some more obscure faces but did surprise us by matching a couple of lesser-known porn performers.
Use the site by uploading an image from your computer or via a URL link to image file online and, if the system is unable to find you a match, then you can turn to the large community of other users who can put their collective minds to work to help solve your mystery.
Find Porn Face
A similar site, you can upload your own image or submit a URL to Find Porn Face and get a bunch of suggestions about who the performer is.
In our test uploads, Find Porn Face fared pretty well and at least found the mainstream stars we were looking for although, at best, the system only rated their match at around 80%. We were given several alternatives, some of whom bore some resemblance to the face in question but others that seemed a little random; in fairness, these were rated at below a 40% match.
The system learns by users providing feedback on the matches so it does pay in the long run if you can submit your response to the question, ‘Do they look the same?’:
- Yeah, looks exactly alike
- There is something in it
- Totally different faces
Popular in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, fans in Brazil and Germany are also using this A.I. porn search engine to help identify adult performers.
Deep Mindy
A play on Google’s Deep Mind A.I. project, Deep Mindy works in much the same way as Porn Star By Face. Using face recognition to search its database you can only upload photos rather than submit a URL.
We found that the site was slow when we tested it and the results very more variable than the other sites we have featured.
Smart Jerk Off Face Finder
We have a fun alternative to the use of A.I. in porn search engines to find stars in this Face Finder tool by Smart Jerk Off.
The idea behind this site is to help you find your porn doppelganger; simply upload a photo of yourself and the system returns a list of free clips you can watch that feature faces like yours. Of course, this could also help if you are looking for content to help identify a performer.
As well as finding some devastatingly good looking porn stars that looked like us….the system easily matched our famous porn stars with a selection of clips to watch online.
A fun tool that is also proving very useful when searching for a porn star using just an image.
Alternatives to A.I. Porn Search Engines
Of course, whilst the technology of A.I. porn search engines is pretty impressive, it’s far from flawless and sometimes you have to rely on the old fashioned ways to get a job done. So, if you are still struggling to find that porn star, cam model or amateur performer from that one clip you have then you could turn to the experts……porn fans themselves.
Yes, there are huge communities of people out there who have pooled their expert knowledge and interest in all things adult video. It might be a controversial specialist subject and not one that comes up much on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? but you’ll be glad of their help when they can finally put an end to your search.
Name That Porn Star
A community of porn star experts get together here to help other users identify the performers in photos, videos and clips. All you have to do is supply the URL to the content you want help with and members go to some length to help you uncover who it is.
The site is driven by a rewards and loyalty program so you award points to those users who helped you most and confirmed the correct answer.
It’s a large network of porn nerds who are more than happy to solve mysteries and the result is a well categorized library of free content. Everyone’s a winner.
The site also has a reverse image search function in which you can submit the URL directly or upload a picture file. However, we didn’t find during our test of the site that it was able to identify even well-known stars.
As such, this is a great alternative method to the A.I. porn search engines by using a huge pool of AV fans who can help you out but not so great for automatic recognition.
Name That Porn
A virtually identical platform with similar portal and limitations with image searching, Name That Porn is another good site for utilizing the expertise of those porn fans who spend more time researching its stars than you do.
Register an account to submit a query by URL and let the network of other users do the hard work for you. Or, if you are particularly knowledgeable yourself then you could try helping other members out by solving the mystery of open queries.
Again, another nice free library of content that is well curated because that’s its job!
The Future of A.I. in Porn
Search engines aren’t the only way that A.I. is changing the adult industry and developments in this field of technology could have other implications for the future.
Perhaps the most worrying for some is the application of facial recognition networks applied to the vast library of porn content online and cross-referenced with profile images across social media networks. Yes, recent reports tweeted by a Yale university research associate in 2019 suggest that a Chinese programmer has built an algorithm which can do just that.
The goal is to help people identify whether their partners (or potential partners) have ever performed in a porn video; amateur or professional.
This creepy application of such a powerful tool could have wider ramifications if, for example, employers thought it would be useful to conduct such a check on job applicants. The legal minefield that this creates is obvious and the moral ones are even more clear but the fact that the programmer has already been able to successfully match over one hundred thousand faces who have ‘starred’ in a porno film and linked them to a social media profile is a concern.
Another, but far more useful, application of this same technology would be to identify victims of human trafficking or exploitation and it is thought that international agencies are already deploying A.I. for this very purpose.
Artificial Intelligence is also being used to create Deep Fake porn, a method of superimposing the face of one person to another’s body using human image synthesis. Another creepy application of the technology, Deep Fake porn also has some serious moral and legal issues.
And finally, could A.I. be used to create unique porn of its own?
Artist and creative technologist, Jake Elwes demonstrated in a 2016 project how A.I. could be fed NSFW images and use these to create pornography from scratch. The resultant 12-minute looped film called Machine Learning Porn is a psychedelic and slightly creepy sexual fantasy but could be the beginnings of a brand new genre of adult content.
