Lisa Ann technically quit the porn business in 2019, but for $30 a month you can now dream up any X-rated scenario of her on your computer.
Ann, 53, was an adult performer for three decades starting in the mid 1990s and retired because she had reached her savings goal.
But last year she had a change of heart. Ann, who considers herself an AI fanatic, signed a contract with OhChat, a London-based AI companion company, to license her likeness on its platform, essentially creating an AI version of her in every way that can be used to make sex scenes for paying customers: same voice, same physique, and same pillowy brown hair.
As issues around deepfakes intensify and questions about the future of the adult industry become more dire with the passing of age-verification laws, several AI companion platforms want to create a new standard for consent-driven AI porn. More than sexting a faceless chatbot, digital twins—also called duplicates, doubles, clones, or replicas—draw on the exact likeness, including speech and mannerisms, of your favorite performers and creators.
Ann, now a self-help author and sports radio host, represents a growing faction in adult entertainment who not only believe AI is going to reshape the sex industry but who want a say in how that change materializes. She sees the decision to partner with OhChat as a way to tap into a fountain of youth—and stay at her peak forever.
“This keeps my name alive,” she says of her digital twin. “She’s never going to age.”
For Cherie Deville, a 47-year-old performer known for shooting MILF content, digital twins are just a smart business strategy to earn passive income while the opportunity is hot. “We can either let the makers of AI take the lion’s share of the money in the sex-work space, or creators and businesses can get on board and start creating their own revenue sources through AI.”
OhChat creators, who must submit 30 images and undergo voice training with a bot, sign an agreement stating the level of sexual content allowed for their digital twin. Ann is considered a “Level 4”—the highest on the platform—which means paying members can create scenarios and chats of her that include full nudity and sex. Per the company’s guidelines, clones can be deleted at any time.
“For guys that like to say good morning or good night, they now have that access. The fact that I'm not shooting scenes anymore also allows new scenes to be created,” Ann says.
Once described by CEO Nic Young as the “love child between OnlyFans and OpenAI,” OhChat launched in 2024 and has since scaled to over 400,000 users. According to data shared with WIRED, OhChat has 250 creators, 90 percent of which are female, and has contracts with celebrities Carmen Elektra and Joe Exotic. The platform runs on a tiered subscription model—$5 a month for on-demand texts or up to $30 for unlimited adult content—and the company, like OnlyFans, takes a 20 percent cut.
Other competitors in the space include My.Club, Joi AI and SinfulX AI, the platform that adult film actress Georgia Koneva partnered with this month, saying, in a press statement, that her avatar gave her a “new way to share my voice and personality with the people who follow me.” According to SinfulX AI, it also develops “original” synthetic characters using licensed source imagery from adult performers whose content it has the rights to use. In the same statement, the company said that those AI-generated “characters” are “designed not to replicate any single individual while still maintaining the realism for which its content is known.”
Some adult creators tell WIRED their reasons for signing over their likenesses are practical in nature. Chloe Amour, who licensed her image to Joi AI, has aspirations beyond sex work.
“When I retire from the adult industry is when I’ll start thinking about a family. And I will continue to use a digital twin even after my retirement.”
Alix Lynx previously told WIRED that she decided to license her image to Joi AI because the tech allows her to safely provide experiences that she would never agree to, including gangbangs, double penetration, anal, and double-vag scenes. “If there’s something you want to see me do that I don’t do in real life, you can plug it in. Have at it,” Lynx says. “I obviously have certain restrictions around illegal stuff, but other than that, it’s pretty much a free-for-all.”
Ann realized that a digital twin could be valuable in a climate that had been corrupted by management companies “hustling” customers, she says. She estimates that the vast majority of adult creator accounts are now run by agencies, many of which use AI impersonators or low-wage workers to chat.
“It’s an insane increase in sales, because you can target people based on their spending,” one agency executive told WIRED in 2024 of using AI.
Creators can make upwards of 60 percent of their income via private messaging; Ann declined to say exactly how much she has made from her clone.
For some performers, digital twins are a more honest arrangement between creators and consumers. “It’s full transparency. You know who you’re talking to,” Ann says.
But she’s aware that human porn is still preferred by a majority of people. “Guys are always going to want real content. Men are always going to want to see new scenes. There will always be a need for all of it. But the fact that I’ve never been awake from 11 pm to 7 am, and now there’s a 24-hour clone that can chat for me—that alone is something. It allows me to keep my brand alive.”
In late March, a fan replied to her on X. “Already chatting with your AI twin at 3 am … send help.”
