X

AI sucks at picking porn names

Sara, just plain Sara? Artificial intelligence is getting good at a lot of things. Coming up with catchy porn names, not so much.

Leslie Katz Former Culture Editor
Leslie Katz led a team that explored the intersection of tech and culture, plus all manner of awe-inspiring science, from space to AI and archaeology. When she's not smithing words, she's probably playing online word games, tending to her garden or referring to herself in the third person.
Credentials
  • Third place film critic, 2021 LA Press Club National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards
Leslie Katz
2 min read
Picture taken on February 10, 2011 shows

Note to adult film stars: don't let AI pick your professional name. 

Rolf Vennenbernd/AFP/Getty Images

Remember the days when you'd pick a porn name by combining the names of your first childhood pet with the street you grew up on? (Golda Encina here… )

That method seems positively quaint now that AI has stepped in to predict the next generation of adult porn star names.

The data science and machine-learning teams at YouPorn, an online purveyor of free porn videos, ran the site's most-searched 16,000 porn names through the company's own neural network to come up with dozens of new combinations (blurred-out but still NSFW images on the other side of that link). Bottom line: Maybe AI should stick to its day job spotting Photoshop fakes and making Dungeons and Dragons creatures.    

Some of the proposed female names -- like Anne, or Man, just plain Man -- hardly have that porn-star-name je ne sais quoi, though at least a couple get closer: Paris Buttomina and Sachel Love, I'm looking at you.

Many of the male names are equally non-porn-ey -- Sara? Joy? Bich? Man Master and Bed Tanter, however, could probably attract a few porn-facing eyeballs.

Earlier this year, YouPorn used the same technology to predict which searches would dominate the site in 2018, landing on the Black Panther combo of T'Challa & Shuri as No. 1. (What is this, Game of Thrones?). The site did see a handful of searches for that combination, according to a YouPorn spokesman, but I'm guessing readers of YouPorn's blog post about the results were just curious about some of the highly random search terms. 

turnedonpromo

A few years back, Bustle asked adult film stars how they chose their porn names, and got a range of responses. Sadie Santana is a huge Carlos Santana fan; Tanya Tate followed Stan Lee's example of naming characters with first and last names that start with the same letter (Bruce Banner, Peter Parker, Susan Storm). Lexington Steele looked up to see a Lexington Ave. street sign, and it stuck. 

As our sex lives become ever more entwined with technology, it should come as no surprise that AI's getting into the business of creating adult aliases. Next thing you know, it will start naming sexbots

Behind the scenes at a sex robot factory

See all photos

'Hello, humans': Google's Duplex could make Assistant the most lifelike AI yet.

Culture: Your hub for everything from film and television to music, comics, toys and sports.