At Cannes 2026, on the sidelines of the festival, a collection of erotic short films generated by algorithms was presented. The project is called Sh(AI)ved Vol. 1. It takes photographs published in an erotic magazine in 1976, processes them through artificial intelligence, adds movement, color, sound, and synthetic dialogue. The result is completely new sexual content: no one has ever shot those scenes, no one has ever spoken those lines. The people photographed decades ago do not know – at least not from anything made public – what is happening today with their images. There is no evidence that they have been consulted or that they have been able to express contemporary consent, nor refusal.
What happened at Cannes raises three issues that would be worth addressing seriously, but which the system prefers to avoid. They concern consent: what it means to use someone’s body without their agreement in the present. They concern the double standard: how the adult sector is marginalized while artificial intelligence erotica receives cultural legitimacy. And they concern the concrete risks for those working in the sector today: what happens when porn generated by algorithms becomes the most morally acceptable choice.
What Happened, and Why It Matters
Sh(AI)ved Vol. 1 was created by Thomas Meier, a producer at Multiformat based in Norway, and distributed by Cultpix, a Swedish platform. Photographs are processed by algorithms that add movement, animation, and sound. The result is half an hour of completely new content, as if those people had acted in scenes they never filmed.
The presentation took place on the sidelines of Cannes 2026, not in the festival’s official selection. But the location matters. That a project of this kind was discussed on one of the world’s most important cultural platforms clearly communicates that this is worthy of serious consideration. It is innovation, it is contemporary art, it is something to talk about.
Cultpix claimed to have a “commercial agreement” with whoever holds the rights to the original material. In a statement to AVN, it explained that the subjects photographed were “paid models who had authorized the shots” and that they “added movement and sound”. It is a legal justification. But it does not address the central question: the body of someone, captured in a photograph in 1976, was transformed without any known contemporary consent from that person.
The Question of Consent: What Does It Mean to Say Yes Fifty Years Ago
Consent is not a document that remains valid forever. It is a specific agreement between people, at a specific time, for a specific use. A person who authorized being photographed for an erotic magazine in 1976 gave consent for that magazine, in that form, in that context. They did not consent to being animated, processed through artificial intelligence, distributed online fifty years later in a completely different and unimaginable form for the time.
When the use changes, when the context changes, when the nature of the exposure transforms – especially in sexual matters – the previous consent does not cover the new act. It is not a legal detail. It is the basic recognition that a person’s body is not a resource available for indefinite reuse simply because someone once obtained permission to photograph it.
Cultpix could argue that the holders of the magazine’s rights authorized all of this. But a magazine’s rights are different from a person’s right to control their own image. The person photographed does not appear to have been consulted today. They have no clear channels to oppose this new form of exploitation of their image.
The Double Standard: When Living Sex Is Censored and Artificial Sex Is Celebrated
MelRose Michaels, founder of Sex Work CEO, published an analysis on Instagram where she noticed something specific about this project. She highlighted how the industry “continues to extract value from the aesthetics and labor of sex workers while the real workers remain expendable“. It is an observation that deserves attention.
Let us consider what happens to sex workers today: Instagram reduces the visibility of adult profiles. PayPal and Stripe ban transactions related to the sector. Those working in the sector are censored, marginalized, stripped of visibility.
At the same time, the sexual content generated by algorithms – what Sh(AI)ved represents – receives completely different treatment. It is presented as artistic and cultural discourse. It deserves a prestigious platform. It deserves serious intellectual discussion.
It is worth pausing here to ask: why is the body of someone working today punished, while the body of someone photographed fifty years ago, used without their contemporary consent, is valued as art?
The answer could be uncomfortable: because AI erotica has no human body that can protest. It has no rights. It does not demand protections. It does not occupy public space. It is generated by algorithms and distributed by platforms. It is “neutral” from the perspective of collective moral sensitivity. Sex made by living people, on the other hand, remains a professional choice that society does not fully recognize. It remains something that must be contained, controlled, rendered invisible.
How Moral Judgment Creates Space for Artificial Intelligence
Here the third question emerges, the one concerning the specific risks for those working in the sector today. It deserves to be separated from the other two because it introduces a new and dangerous dynamic.
Historically, porn has driven technological evolution. Every time a new innovation emerges – from photography to video to digital – the adult sector adopted it first, tested it, perfected it. It has been an invisible but fundamental laboratory for technological development.
But this time the dynamic changes. Not only do sex workers face a technology that excludes them from competition. The entire creative sector is facing the same problem. Film actors are filing lawsuits. Writers and screenwriters are organizing, stunt performers are protesting. Film unions occupy public space to negotiate structured protections.
The Academy has responded with new rules for the Oscars 2027: performances must be “demonstrably performed by humans with their consent”. Scripts must be written by humans. It is an institutional recognition that the problem is real. Cinema is building articulate defenses.
But the adult sector remains on the margins of this discussion. Not because the problem is less serious – it is identical – but because a different cultural stigma exists. Porn actors and creators do not have the same political weight as classical cinema. Their problems are seen as a moral question, not a labor question. While cinema negotiates serious protections with institutions, the adult sector continues to be treated as something the system prefers not to address.
And here the real risk emerges. If the adult sector is viewed with suspicion, if those who work in it have no voice in institutions, then AI erotica becomes the natural alternative. Not because it is better, but because it poses no moral problems. There is no one to “protect” because there is no one. It is content generated, distributed, consumed without the system having to confront the dignity of those who produce it.
This creates a space where artificial intelligence is not only a technical innovation. It becomes a solution to the “moral question” of human sex. The system could prefer AI erotica precisely because it excludes sex workers, because it does not force anyone to recognize their work.
The Legal Framework: Questions of Copyright, Image, and Privacy
Beneath all this lie complex legal questions that deserve to be addressed with clarity.
In the United States context, Thaler v. Perlmutter (March 2025) established that a work created autonomously by algorithms cannot obtain copyright protection. There must be an identifiable human author. The Supreme Court refused to examine the appeal in March 2026, leaving this interpretation in effect definitively.
In Europe the framework is more complex. Copyright on original photographs from the 1970s remains protected for the life of the author plus 70 years if considered creative works, while in jurisdictions like Italy even “simple photographs” are now protected for 70 years from their creation. In practice, erotic photos published in European magazines in the 1970s are almost certainly still covered by rights. But alongside copyright exists a structure of protections that concern the person: the right to image, the right to privacy, the right to control how one’s body is used. Unlike copyright, these rights have no fixed term like 70 years: they follow the person and last for their entire life, with possible protections even after death depending on the jurisdiction.
When someone’s body is used to create new content in a completely different context – especially a sexual context – a tension emerges: the economic use made of the image conflicts with the person’s right to control how it is exploited. European legal systems have long recognized that a new publication, a new distribution, a new type of use of one’s image is a new act that requires new consent.
If images are processed through techniques that analyze physical features to reconstruct or animate subjects, protections related to personal data treatment also come into play: a person’s right to control how biometric data about their body is processed. This adds further complexity, especially when the context is sexual.
On the front of future legislation, the European Union is building specific protections against non-consensual sexual deepfakes (these will need to be implemented in national laws by June 2027). It is a signal that institutions are recognizing the problem. But it is also a signal that innovation continues to move faster than legislation.
Critical Years for the Adult Sector
Sh(AI)ved could face significant legal risks. It could lose lawsuits. But even if it did, the cultural damage would already be done. A platform like Cannes will have hosted the project anyway, will have signaled a direction.
What is really important to understand is that these are critical years for the adult sector. Artificial intelligence will not arrive gradually. It will arrive quickly, and it will transform the landscape. It is already doing so for classical cinema: institutions are rushing to repair the damage, negotiating protections, building walls. For the adult sector, the same transformation happens without even a conversation. Without representation. Without voice.
The decisions being made now – how the system addresses these projects, how it regulates the use of images, how it does or does not protect those working in the sector – will define what remains possible in the coming years. If the system decides that AI erotica is preferable to real sex workers, that choice will have drastic consequences.
For now, the silence continues. The institutions that should address this prefer to look away. And while they look away, technology advances without boundaries or discussion.
