Speaker 1 (0s): This is Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker, and welcome to adult site broker talk, where each week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry. And we give you a tip on buying and selling websites. This week we'll be speaking with Steve Lightspeed of Deepfake dot com. At Adult Site Broker, we've doubled our affiliate payouts at ASB Cash.
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Now time for this week's interview. My guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk is Steve Lightspeed of Lightspeed ai. Steve, thanks for being with us today on Adult Site Broker Talk.
Speaker 2 (3m 16s): Thanks, Bruce. Glad to be here.
Speaker 1 (3m 19s): It's nice to have you. Now Steve is the Founder and c e O of Lightspeed Media Corp. He's an AVN porn hall of Fame Inductee. In 1999, Steve created Lightspeedcash dot com, which grew from a part time hobby in one of the web's longest running and most successful solo girl paysite networks and affiliate programs. Steve currently runs Lightspeed AI, which you can find at Lightspeed ai.com. a technology and services company focused on bringing the amazing capabilities of AI to the adult industry and its content creators.
Community. Steve has spoken at dozens of adult industry conferences and is known for his honest, down to earth and fun approach to the business of porn. Steve just launched the first 100% AI site in the industry with Deepfake dot com, which works basically like a creator's network with 250,000 models ready to send custom, sexy, and nude pics on demand. The site is free to try and an available pro versions offering additional image generation options and advanced usability features is available.
Deepfake dot com has an affiliate program paying 20% of lifetime revenue, and a white label version will be available soon. Steve can be reached at Lightspeed ai rather Lightspeed ai.com. How'd you like your commercial?
Speaker 2 (4m 48s): Very nice, thank you.
Speaker 1 (4m 49s): You're very welcome. So Steve, can you tell us a little bit about your background and what led you to start your own business in the adult industry?
Speaker 2 (4m 59s): Sure. I started out as a computer programmer in Seattle, and in the late nineties we saw a guy on TV talking about how he made millions of dollars by putting pictures of naked college girls online. And my wife just looked at me and said, wow, that's, you know, if he could do that, why couldn't you do that? And I thought, you're, you're the greatest wife of all time. I can't believe you thought of this, but she do it. So yeah, let's try it and see what happens.
So I hired a couple of models and took some pictures. I totally didn't know what I was doing. I've never touched a camera in my life, but it was just during that time in the late nineties where anybody could put up a site and make money with it. So I literally just started half-assed, didn't know what I was doing, and lucked out timing-wise. And I kind of kind of floundered around for the first couple of years until I met Richard and Tanker. I gotta where I, I realized that, okay, I can't really do all this myself.
There's a lot, lot to running a website and marketing and photography and doing it all by myself. So I hired, hired a tanker and Richard and things just took off. It was crazy. Tanker knew everybody in the industry. Our affiliate program just blew up overnight. And Richard got the office and all the websites and servers organized and basically unscrewed all the things that I messed up. So yeah, it, we just started killing it.
We hired our first good model in 2000, our first superstar named Tawny Stone. Every, a lot of people have heard that name.
Speaker 1 (6m 46s): I remember her.
Speaker 2 (6m 47s): Yeah, she was, she was literally a phenomenon and she was one of the first regular girl next door types that had her own little website. And it, it was just, like I said, a phenomenon. We, we couldn't believe how popular she became and we went full bore, like probably spent, I dunno, upwards of a million on marketing for one girl and it really paid off. We gotta travel around the world. We gotta know everybody and gotta be part of the industry, which worked out great.
Speaker 1 (7m 22s): Yeah, I I, I remember those early days seeing you at the Phoenix Forum cuz by then you were in Arizona and Lightspeed was, you're right, it was a phenomenon, man, you, you really started the whole solo girl thing, didn't you?
Speaker 2 (7m 38s): You know, I get credit for it. I think we were one of the first that really tried to do non porn stars or non swinger sites. Everybody else was doing, you know, amateur sites or, or fan sites for, for existing models. But we were the first ones to go out and like, oh, let's hire a waitress and give her her own website and say that she's famous and see what happens. It just really worked out. We found out there at the time, there was a lot of girls who wanted to do this and just didn't have the resources.
N nobody back then knew how to build a website or, you know, put server together. It, it was a perfect match. Bonnie and I argued a bit about who made who, but I couldn't have done it without her. And she couldn't have done it without me. So it was a, we, we worked together for seven years and built Lightspeedcash into what it became, you know, and we, we opened 35 sites after her, which it, it just became a, a real thing. And we got it big into the marketing and, and the affiliate side of it.
We really like to treat our affiliates as good as we could. We would spoil the mitten at every opportunity
Speaker 1 (8m 50s): I remember. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (8m 52s): Fun. I remember we had a, a party here in Phoenix where I was trying to spend $60,000 on 20 guys in three days. Oh geez. It was kinda like an episode of Brewster's Millions. We were just like, how can we,
Speaker 1 (9m 5s): I was about to say, it sounds like the movie Brewster's Millions. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (9m 8s): It was kind of like, how can we go blow more money right now? Let's go do stupid stuff. So we, we did, we we did all kinds of stupid stuff. It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (9m 17s): Yeah. I don't, I do not even wanna know the details because I can just imagine. And I'm sure they were very sorted.
Speaker 2 (9m 25s): Well, everybody got their own presidential suite at the Hilton and everybody got massages and jerseys and we played golf. We did go-kart races. Sounds good. We had a paintball war and it was so much fun.
Speaker 1 (9m 40s): That's awesome. And I remember those days at the Phoenix Forum. Those were good days, man. I, I missed that show so much.
Speaker 2 (9m 46s): That was really where we got our, our big break was because the forum was in Phoenix and we were in Phoenix. Cece Bill really just kind of put their arm around me and said, all right, you're doing this show with us. Okay. I dunno what I'm doing. Let's, what do you want me to do? You know, in the first year we, we threw a, I think this might have been before your, your time, but we threw a party after party, not realizing that you have to have, you know, bartenders and security and people cleaning up and stuff like that.
But no, we just, we just stuffed a room full of booze and told everyone to help themselves, which was, I ended up taking something like $8,500 in damages. People completely trashed my suite three nights in a row Nazi once.
Speaker 1 (10m 37s): Oh lord. Yeah. Security probably would've been advisable. Oh,
Speaker 2 (10m 42s): I remember going in the, the party suite in the morning and Cece bill was in there with a power sander sanding the top of the table down cause somebody had written all over it with permanent marker walking through the carpet. Like squeak. It was just soaked. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11m 4s): That was a little bit before my time there. I think I was there for the third year of Phoenix Forum. I think that's when I started.
Speaker 2 (11m 12s): What, what year would that have been? 2000.
Speaker 1 (11m 14s): Oh God. Yeah. It's possible.
Speaker 2 (11m 17s): It started in 2000.
Speaker 1 (11m 19s): Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's see.
Speaker 2 (11m 21s): Good times. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11m 23s): Damn good times. And obviously there was Nick Dodge ball, which you started and sponsored and you and Bob Rice.
Speaker 2 (11m 32s): Yep.
Speaker 1 (11m 33s): Beautiful ball. Beautiful. Bob had a really good time with that one.
Speaker 2 (11m 38s): That was actually my little son's idea. Of course he didn't know Oh wow. Exactly what we were talking about. But I said, you know, I, I called him my little consultant. I said, Hey, if you had to entertain a bunch of your friends for an afternoon, what would you do do? He's like, dodge ball Dodge. It's awesome.
Speaker 1 (11m 57s): You kinda took it to the next level. Right. And how old was he then?
Speaker 2 (12m 1s): We're gonna need strips. He was
Speaker 1 (12m 4s): And how old was he then?
Speaker 2 (12m 5s): He would've been nine maybe. Oh,
Speaker 1 (12m 8s): He probably could have figured out the naked part by then. No,
Speaker 2 (12m 11s): No. He didn't know until he was a teenager. A long story. We, we hit everything pretty well.
Speaker 1 (12m 17s): Yeah. Yeah. Bob, Bob was, Bob was your mc man and he was damn good at it.
Speaker 2 (12m 22s): Yeah. Know Bob was like a brother to me. Him and I, me back, I I started in the industry with him. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12m 29s): Didn't
Speaker 2 (12m 30s): Do him at all.
Speaker 1 (12m 31s): Yeah, I miss him too. He was my, yeah, he was, he was my mentor man, also my mentor in this business cuz he was doing a little bit of website brokering and he said, you know, with my new gig, I'm not gonna be doing it anymore and you should do it. And I have him to thank for that. I have him to thank for a lot.
Speaker 2 (12m 49s): Was that when I hired him?
Speaker 1 (12m 51s): No, that would've been when he went to work for that. The last company he worked for in the industry, the ones who kinda gave him the bad gave him the bad wrap. Yeah. The,
Speaker 2 (13m 1s): The year he did the mini kiss in Mexico. That was,
Speaker 1 (13m 5s): That was great. That was good time. Oh
Speaker 2 (13m 7s): God. Super fun.
Speaker 1 (13m 9s): Oh my God. Oh my god. There's so
Speaker 2 (13m 11s): Many stories. You know, we, we just lost those.
Speaker 1 (13m 13s): Yeah, that's right. You were, you heard all those too. Those, those events in Mexico in Baja were just classic man. We had so much fun. I remember I, I spent one of those events I roomed with Alex Raelian and there was not a sober moment between either of us. Yeah. And I remember when on the way down, they had a bus from the airport in San Diego and we started drinking at the beginning of the ride. And I got off through my stuff in the room and literally passed out in the back of a pickup truck and they had to wake me up because they had to go obvi probably get beer, I'm guessing.
But
Speaker 2 (13m 56s): Those, those parties in Mexico were so much fun. Yeah. You know, we just lost Mark Womack last year. Yeah, I know. Every, every time I think of Mexico, I just remember Mark going crazy in Mexico walking through that big plate glass window and Oh God. He was
Speaker 1 (14m 14s): Forgotten about that. Yeah. Oh dear Mark Dear Mark, I had stayed in touch with him to the end. It was so sad to hear that he had passed.
Speaker 2 (14m 25s): Yeah. It really was. He is much too young for all that
Speaker 1 (14m 29s): Diabetic shock mind, dear God. Yeah. It was, it was very, very shocking to my system to hear that about him because I just talked
Speaker 2 (14m 37s): To him. I actually traveled with Mark quite a bit, so I took it pretty hard.
Speaker 1 (14m 41s): Yeah. I think all of us did. I think anyone who was close to him did, cuz he was one of the most lovely people. Oh. He
Speaker 2 (14m 47s): Was very much in the center of everybody. Everybody loved Mark. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14m 53s): Yeah. Indeed. Can you share the story of your first big break and how it impacted your career?
Speaker 2 (15m 1s): That that would've either been Tawny Stone or the Phoenix Forum or combination of both. Like I said, it was Ron Cadwell from CC Bill and Frank and Joan really taking care of us and just kinda like, yeah, we, we know you don't know what you're doing. We're gonna, we're gonna show you how. And I, I remember Sean Eggert telling me, we're gonna blow you so Sky High at this show. And everybody thought I own that show.
Speaker 1 (15m 29s): I know. After you stopped sponsoring, everyone seemed kinda lost, to be honest with you. Well,
Speaker 2 (15m 35s): It, it went on as long as I could keep it going. The Dodge stuff was 20 in of with hundred degree weather. It's literally like planning multiple simultaneous weddings.
Speaker 1 (15m 52s): Yeah. Remember, remember the year that that girls Gone Wild were there and they attracted the attention to the news and we had news helicopters over the, the mission palms and so we had to cancel dodge ball. That's right.
Speaker 2 (16m 5s): That's the only year we canceled it because there was just too, too much hate. The hotel was freaking out. Yeah. That was, that was a tough year. But the other years were made up for it and lots of fun. But I used to book 60 girls and hope that 15 to 20 would show up on the day of the event. My phone would just ring off the hook. I can't make it. Whatever.
Speaker 1 (16m 29s): Yeah. And then sometimes you probably had to grab reserves,
Speaker 2 (16m 34s): You know, in the first few years we definitely did, but it kind of became a tradition and girls started really looking forward to playing. We had a couple girls that played every year.
Speaker 1 (16m 43s): Yeah. Yeah. So what do you think contributed to your rise in the industry?
Speaker 2 (16m 50s): One of the things that we did differently was, at the time, everybody was all about $35 payouts and how big can, how much money can we spend on one guy? They're all chasing the whales. And we were like, all let's, let's not exclude everybody else and worry about one guy. Let's, I said I'd rather supported by a bunch of small bricks than one thick rope. So we focused on the little affiliates where every I, I wanted 10,000 people sending us one join a day.
And that's pretty much what we got to. It was a very smart strategy until things changed in about 2008. A lot of the small companies just got squeezed out because of market forces.
Speaker 1 (17m 41s): Definitely. Well, the tube sites certainly contributed to that.
Speaker 2 (17m 46s): Yeah. You know, it was perfect. Storm kinda took the whole industry by surprise and we weren't really organized to the point that we could do anything about it. Everybody was friendly but not involved with each other. I think back then, if we would've realized what the dangers really looked like, we, we might have bought a little harder, but hindsight's 2020. I've been told I should get over it.
Speaker 1 (18m 12s): Exactly. Yeah. That's how they say
Speaker 2 (18m 15s): I I'm over it. I am totally onto the next thing. I'm ready to release my, my AI site. That's my 100% focus for the last ye several years. I knew this day was coming. I kept saying that it's gonna be a day we'll have 100% virtual models and it's gonna change everything.
Speaker 1 (18m 35s): Oh, this, this is the next ground swell. No two ways about it. Th
Speaker 2 (18m 39s): This is the year of ai. Everybody has been impacted already, whether they realize it or not. And it's gonna change everything in it's, it's definitely coming.
Speaker 1 (18m 51s): Right. Well you sent me some of the details for our talk today using chat G P T, so there you go. Yep,
Speaker 2 (18m 58s): Yep. That's right. I, I haven't written a line of code or a paragraph on in a memo since I found chat g pt. It does everything for me.
Speaker 1 (19m 7s): Yeah. I need to use it more. Definitely. It
Speaker 2 (19m 10s): Actually wrote most of the Deepfake site for me. I said, how do you, how do you picture following directions? And I said, we have 250,000 girls on the site. It, it actually named them all, it gave them all little biographies.
Speaker 1 (19m 30s): Oh my God. This was all chat G p T. Holy shit. I find out more about it every day and I've used it for minor things, but I, I definitely need to use it more. So how do you view the industry now? And we will get obviously to your new project, but how do you view the industry now compared to when you started?
Speaker 2 (19m 53s): Oh, well it's definitely a lot more matured now. It used to be, like I said, any moron with an idea could launch a site and make money. I don't think that's true anymore. Also, back when I started, the models kind of took what they could get. They didn't have a lot of power versus now where they have all the power, the models have really taken their, their rightful place in the industry as I'm the one who's gonna be in charge between cam networks and only fans and the flip sites and stuff.
The, the models pretty much set their own pace now and they don't have to deal with producers and directors and all the old school stuff that used to happen. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20m 35s): And their relationships with those people have changed because of things like content trades.
Speaker 2 (20m 41s): Yeah. You know, I always like the personal relationships part of the industry. If I ever did a traffic trade, I want to know the guy. I, I wanna have met him personally. Cause I don't wanna do business with someone that I don't, you know, I, I would just go and make an outta myself and if they don't like me, my way of letting them sort themselves out. Alright, if you don't like me, you just save me a shit ton of time. Thanks. Let yourself out. See ya.
Speaker 1 (21m 10s): You're so funny, Steve. You're so funny. Well,
Speaker 2 (21m 13s): You know, you can't win 'em all. No matter what I did in this industry, I would always have somebody mad at me about something. Okay. You can't win 'em all
Speaker 1 (21m 23s): Shit happens. Shit happens. You and I have had our ups and downs over the years, but we're two of the survivors, my friend. We are two of the survivors and we both like baseball, so we got that going for us.
Speaker 2 (21m 36s): I don't know where you were, but I don't remember any ups and downs. You're mad at me.
Speaker 1 (21m 42s): Not anymore.
Speaker 2 (21m 46s): We'll think about that off.
Speaker 1 (21m 47s): Listen to this. Listen to him. So what changes in the industry led to your early retirement and how did you navigate that transition?
Speaker 2 (21m 58s): Oh, well, I mean, clearly anybody that reads my posts knows that I'm not a fan of tube sites. I feel like we just got rolled over and I, I launched a few sites. I tried a few different ideas, some of the best work I've ever done and I could not get traction because all anyone wanted to talk about was sites. So I just went, alright, I'm gonna, I put all the Lightspeed sites on, on autopilot now. They, they never actually went down.
They've been getting new sales every day for 20 years. But I just kind of decided, hey, I'm gonna, I don't need the money right now. I'm just gonna kick back and enjoy my family and do some other stuff. I, I volunteered. I worked with handicapped kids for a couple years. Turned out to be really rewarding. I'm glad I did it. I took some mainstream jobs as I was bored and to learn more about ai. Everything I've been doing for the last six years or more has been AI oriented.
And it's, it's been fascinating watching how quickly it's evolving. I, I remember in 2015 running a report and it said the, the ad that makes the most money is the one that you should send the most traffic to. I'm like, oh, that's mind blowing advice. Thank you. Captain. Obvious I called it artificial stupidity since then. Chad, g p t and the image generation stuff. And today I was just reading about they can literally use AI to read your mind.
That's terrifying.
Speaker 1 (23m 33s): There is some scary stuff involved with that.
Speaker 2 (23m 36s): Yeah. I think I'm not gonna be putting one of those little hats on anytime soon.
Speaker 1 (23m 43s): No, I don't want anybody reading my mind.
Speaker 2 (23m 47s): No. For good reason.
Speaker 1 (23m 49s): Very, very good reason. So during your eight year hiatus, what activities and pursuits did you really focus on? You mentioned volunteering, you mentioned your family. How did they shape your perspective on the industry coming back?
Speaker 2 (24m 5s): Well, working in mainstream made me realize that I was born for porn. I I got fired from multiple jobs in a row for being me. No, I, I get it. I'm not everyone's cup of tea and I definitely have a right sense of humor and things have changed. You're different,
Speaker 1 (24m 25s): Steve, but aren't we all, aren't we all different in this industry? I
Speaker 2 (24m 28s): I, I just found out that I am old and I'm, I'm a GenX where Gen Xs really don't have a good spot in the workforce anymore. It's all run by millennials and it's just a different world.
Speaker 1 (24m 46s): Consider yourself lucky you could be a boomer.
Speaker 2 (24m 49s): Yeah. You know, I get that. And I think it's funny because I used to have the same issues with my dad is I have with millennials now, you know, I can remember my dad saying, there's no reason that you will ever need to connect your computer to anyone else's. What? I think you might have missed the ball on that one.
Speaker 1 (25m 9s): Just a tad. Just a tad.
Speaker 2 (25m 12s): Internet. That's ridiculous. No one needs that. My dad was not a tech guy.
Speaker 1 (25m 18s): Yeah. There was my mom, she worked for the Social Security administration and she worked with computers there, you know, the big main mainframes. And she did not even want to think about getting a pc. I said, mom, I'll get you a personal computer. No, I don't want one. I said, Hey mom, you can play solitaire on it. She says, I'll use cards.
Speaker 2 (25m 41s): Yeah. It's generational. I think most of those people
Speaker 1 (25m 44s): Oh, big time. Big time. She had me when she was 38. So, you know, I mean, I'm 65. I feel like
Speaker 2 (25m 50s): I was born right at the right time. I was the first generation that had computers in high school. I mean, me and a few other kids had already taught ourselves at home when they brought computers in that teachers had never seen one before. And they're reading out of the book, like along with everyone else. And back then the books were notorious for having typos and mistakes. I'm like, Nope, that's, that book is wrong. And the guy's like, you, you know, you need to go to the principal's office. There's no way this book is wrong.
Speaker 1 (26m 20s): I was gonna say, how many times did you get expelled for saying things like that?
Speaker 2 (26m 24s): Well, I, I actually got expelled from Arizona State University for tutoring.
Speaker 1 (26m 31s): For tutoring.
Speaker 2 (26m 33s): Yep. I was 19 years old, very talented in computer programming. I was getting straight A's and trying to use my geek skills to get myself late. So I saw a girl struggling in the computer lab and so I helped her out just to get to know her and introduce myself. And they had some whizzbang system that figured out that we worked together and they called us in the office and said, do you guys know each other? Yeah. Well, did you work together on this project?
Well, and she tried to throw herself at, you know, like, yeah, he helped me. And they're like, well, you're both expelled. You knew the rules.
Speaker 1 (27m 12s): Oh, Jesus.
Speaker 2 (27m 14s): That was the end of my great college career. My, my freshman year was the best four and a half years of my life.
Speaker 1 (27m 24s): Steve, you kill me by the way. You said you you'd lived in Seattle. Was Seattle your hometown?
Speaker 2 (27m 29s): I grew up on the peninsula in Washington state. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27m 32s): That was my mom's hometown was Seattle. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27m 34s): I moved to Seattle when I was in my mid twenties. I went from the, the poor house to the penthouse. Not a bad in
Speaker 1 (27m 42s): The nineties to make
Speaker 2 (27m 44s): Kinda
Speaker 1 (27m 44s): Like the Jeffersons, huh? Well,
Speaker 2 (27m 47s): Back then, skilled programmers were hard to find. And we had contracts that were paying us $220 an hour as much as we can stand to work. I was working 16, 18 hour days and billing for all of it. I got just pumping money into the bank. That's kind of how I had money to be able to start Lightspeed. I saved a bit of money during that period.
Speaker 1 (28m 12s): Fantastic. Wow. So what motivated you besides loving porn to make a comeback in the industry? And how have your goals evolved since your initial success?
Speaker 2 (28m 26s): Well, I'm back for ai. I have not been as excited about anything like this. Maybe the last time was when I got my first computer or when I first went online. AI is going to change everything. I, I just can't, I can't even imagine all the possibilities at this point. I think we're, we're all gonna be shocked at how much things change and how quickly.
Speaker 1 (28m 51s): I got a question for you about that recently, and we, we record this in May recently, Elon Musk went on record as saying that he thinks that people should halt the brakes on AI and Congress should look at it and the government should look at it and there should be some regulation. Of course, at the same time he develops his own AI product. But what do you think about the dangers of it?
Speaker 2 (29m 16s): I I I think it's, they're probably correct that we're maybe opening up Pandora's box and not necessarily for the best, but I also think that there's actually has been people thinking about the ethics of AI and robotics for 30 to 40 years. It's not a new topic. There's Ray K from Google's been talking about ethics in ai, his Singularity Institute.
He's been talking about that stuff since the mid nineties. You know, they have annual conventions where they get together to discuss how should this work, what should the rules be, who should be able to do what. And I think that's a big reason that GPT came out the way it did. Free to everybody. Let's, let's try this out. Let's not just hold it. Can you imagine if you gave it to certain people only that gives them a huge advantage and everyone else gets left out.
Speaker 1 (30m 14s): Yes. It's very democratic, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (30m 16s): You kind of have to give it to everyone or it's gonna uneven the blank field.
Speaker 1 (30m 22s): Oh, I hear you. So tell us about your new AI image generation product and its potential impact on the content industry.
Speaker 2 (30m 31s): Well, I'm sure everybody's curious about AI and what it can do for models and what it's going to do through the modeling industry. I have a different perspective on it, probably because I've been working in it longer, but I think it's gonna help all of us. I think for models there's a ton of valuable things that it can help models with, not the least of which is, is privacy. I know so many models who feel like they made a mistake or years later wish they hadn't done it.
And hey, if we could have altered your face to where you were just a little bit unrecognizable, you wouldn't be having all these issues now. And a lot of girls go through significant surgeries to maintain their looks with a, with ai, you won't need to do that. We'll take pictures of you when you look your best and that'll be you for the rest of your life. How many models have been forced to retire just because they got older?
Speaker 1 (31m 32s): Yeah, very true.
Speaker 2 (31m 34s): You know, the other things I think with AI is right now girls, they're on only fans, they're on camps. Well that's great, but the problem is there's only one of them. What if they manage 10 versions of themselves where the AI is doing a lot of the work and they're kind of just overseeing the whole operation. And that tells me they would make 10 times more money. They could manage their own little networks and still only view the amount of work they're doing now.
Speaker 1 (32m 1s): Yeah, I guess the possibilities are endless.
Speaker 2 (32m 3s): Well, we could take virtual models and scan their bodies. It only takes a few hundred images now and the girls wouldn't even have to actually work anymore. We could just use their avatars and make new content from the old content. I tell 'em, I can reduce your, your job to going out to the mailbox and collecting your check.
Speaker 1 (32m 25s): Not a bad thing. Well,
Speaker 2 (32m 27s): And everyone's like, well what about personal interaction? Yeah. I think that that's an important thing for a lot of users, but I also know that I've been an important consumer my whole life and I've never once gone on a can show or wanted to talk to any of the models.
Speaker 1 (32m 46s): Well, and there's another thing too, Steve, that, that you don't bring up and that is that the most popular creators out there already have people doing, chatting for them. They're not doing their own communications. They're either going through an only fan's agency who's taking care of the chatters or they're hiring chatters themselves.
Speaker 2 (33m 9s): Yeah. Well the old joke is don't pull the curtain too far back on the porn industry because you're, you're sooner find a fat bald guy
Speaker 1 (33m 20s): That's
Speaker 2 (33m 20s): Probably me
Speaker 1 (33m 22s): Or a short Filipino,
Speaker 2 (33m 26s): You know, we've, we've managed Tawny Stone's band mail for over 20 years. I finally said, it's just not right for me to do it myself. So I, I hired, hired my 85 year old mother to do it.
Speaker 1 (33m 40s): Oh my God. That's hilarious.
Speaker 2 (33m 43s): Yeah, maybe we don't, that's
Speaker 1 (33m 50s): That's awesome. And it's hilarious us us about Go ahead. Sorry. One,
Speaker 2 (33m 55s): One guy, one guy sent the email, he said, I hope I'm talking to you and not some old fat guy. I'm fat.
Speaker 1 (34m 12s): That's hilarious. That's hilarious. So tell us about Deepfake dot com. I think some people may be a little bit scared by the name Steve.
Speaker 2 (34m 21s): Yeah. Okay. So Deepfake, yes, it does have a, a negative connotation because of where people have taken it so far. Right up to now it has been, Hey, let's make naked pictures of Emma Watson or Scarlet Johansen. Hey, let's make naked pictures of our college teacher or our, our friends, which that's fucked up. I agree. That's fucked up. I think that women should have the rights to their own bodies, including their own faces, and there's, nobody would have the rights to steal it and especially to make private appearing pictures that would put them in any kind of weird situation because the, the technology really is good enough, you won't be able to tell.
And is she lying and saying it was a deep bake or is she really a porn girl and just doesn't want everyone to know it's gonna put people in a weird spot. But on my site, We are only focusing on imaginary girls. Every one of those 250,000 is a girl that does not exist. So where's the harm? And the, the best part of AI is not even the endless variety, but the ability to create your own out of your own memory.
Like I have girlfriends long gone that I, I always wish I had a sexy picture of. I can reimagine it and get one that's, it's not her, but it's pretty good fact. Similarly of someone that looks very similar, which I don't think there's a big issue with that. And as long as you're not publishing it, and especially not with someone's name saying, Hey, this is, this is my girlfriend from high school. Now we're talking about art and literature and first Amendment rights and you know, are you allowed to have private thoughts?
And yeah, I think as long as they stay private, what's the problem? But I, I think other people are gonna be worried that AI is, you know, gonna take their jobs, which if they let it, it will. And if they are smart, they'll profit from it because it can make their jobs easier and last longer and pay more. So instead of arguing and crying about it, I think that smart girls will figure out how to get in on it, which is one of the services that we're gonna be offering.
Speaker 1 (36m 48s): Talk about that.
Speaker 2 (36m 49s): Well, we're gonna help, not all but some models because we have limited resources. We're gonna be a little choosy in the beginning, but I wanna help, especially some of the older models who feel like they're ready to retire. Some of those are my dear friends from the last 20 years and I kind of wanna see if we can help 'em out a little bit. I think Deepak is the perfect opportunity for that.
Speaker 1 (37m 14s): Sure. That's awesome. So what are the main controversies and concerns surrounding your AI image generation technology, and how do you plan to address them?
Speaker 2 (37m 26s): The the biggest problem with AI is it doesn't know what is considered appropriate or not. And it, it does what it's told to do. So if you ask an AI to create a picture of a naked five-year-old girl, it will, I think that that is gonna be one of the major challenges. Oh
Speaker 1 (37m 47s): Yeah. And there's al there's already people producing kitty porn anyway with AI tools, so they're gonna be able to go crazy.
Speaker 2 (37m 55s): Yeah. So I've spent countless hours working with programmers and CC Bill and my own lawyers set of lawyers to figure out exactly what are the lines we're not gonna cross. And under 18 is absolutely gonna be one of 'em. You can build in restrictions, but same as you can say no nudity, you can say, nope, sorry, you're not gonna get Emma Watson, you're not gonna get a 10 year old girl. You can put in all kinds of restrictions on these celebrities are the same.
There's already been some good examples of famous celebrities being used in advertisements. Well, I think that's where the lawyers need to step up and say, wait a minute, you can't use her name aunt or her face who told you you could. And those problems have already been addressed. There's already laws in place to deal with that stuff that's false light and you know, all the different legal recourses that that models have, including copyright and trademark.
Speaker 1 (39m 0s): So how does your company intend to minimize any negative effects of your AI technology on models and content providers?
Speaker 2 (39m 9s): Well, I think that one of the main things is we're just not gonna say these are real girls. If you want real girls, I fully invite you to go find a real girl. They definitely have their market and I, I don't want to take that from anybody, but if you're just going to an old paysite, looking at pictures or whatever, building your own girl is a pretty addictive thing. We're, we're really not creating a porn site as much as a software as a service.
We're allowing people to create their own, their own porn. They, they can be Steve Lightspeed for the day. Hmm. I don't know if you, have you tried it yet? It is pretty fun.
Speaker 1 (39m 48s): You talking about yours? Yeah. I didn't know I could to be honest with you. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (39m 53s): It's free to try. You can build 2020 test images a day.
Speaker 1 (39m 57s): Oh, I will.
Speaker 2 (39m 59s): There's also, like I said, a quarter million pre-made images you can look at and if you like any of 'em, you can just clone it and give her a different haircut, change her weight, her height, you know, make her topless, put her in a pool, put her on whatever you wanna do.
Speaker 1 (40m 18s): Excellent. So in what ways do you believe your AI image generation product, besides what you already mentioned, could enhance the earning potential of creators and content providers?
Speaker 2 (40m 29s): Well, well I think the, the big one is that it can allow them to manage multiple personalities.
Speaker 1 (40m 35s): Yeah, you mentioned that, right?
Speaker 2 (40m 36s): Yeah. I think a smart model would be all over that idea because hey, everybody loves you as a blonde, but how many more people would love you as a redhead or a brunette or bigger tits or, or whatever, what, however different you wanna be. This one's wearing glasses, that one is a dom. You can make content for a hundred pictures for 50 cents and it takes about 20 minutes. It seems to me like if I was a model, I would be looking into that right away.
Speaker 1 (41m 8s): Yeah, definitely. So again, you alluded to some of this, but get into more detail. How will your technology make the jobs of models and content providers easier and safer? I think the easier you just just mentioned and you touched on safer.
Speaker 2 (41m 24s): Well, safer for sure. We can easily mask a, a model, give her a different hair color, remove tattoos, or give her a completely different face. She can pick any of 250,000 faces. I like that one. Okay. That's your new face.
Speaker 1 (41m 43s): Ooh. Can I change my face? I'd like that.
Speaker 2 (41m 45s): Yeah, you totally could I go on zoom As as Eric lord of the Rings all the time. It's to the point where you won't be able to believe anything you see. Yeah. Pictures and video. It's getting very, very good.
Speaker 1 (42m 3s): Isn't that kind of scary to a point?
Speaker 2 (42m 5s): Yeah. It's just begging to be abused. That's where I think what we need to work together as a responsible community in the, in the adult industry and set aside like, how should this work? Yes. What, what should we do? What should we not do? What would we do when we catch somebody breaking the rules so that it doesn't all get shut down. I, I just think that there's so much potential. All we have to do is curb the greed.
Speaker 1 (42m 34s): Isn't that always the hard part?
Speaker 2 (42m 36s): That is a pretty tall order sometimes.
Speaker 1 (42m 39s): Big time.
Speaker 2 (42m 39s): You know, the big issue though is of course, even if the US has laws, if I'm in Russia, I don't care about US laws. The same reason that if China has a law, I don't give a shit about their laws.
Speaker 1 (42m 52s): Yeah, exactly. So what are the long term goals for your company in regards to the development and implementation of your AI technology in the content industry?
Speaker 2 (43m 4s): My ultimate goal is to create a 100% indistinguishable model that guys can engage with, including, you know, get naked on your bed and do a little cam show. We're probably not more than 18 months away from being able to do that.
Speaker 1 (43m 22s): You answered my next question. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (43m 25s): It's coming. There's already a lot you can do with video. Virtual avatars are already pretty, pretty hard to tell that they're not real and the voice stuff is dead on right now. They're really getting good at that.
Speaker 1 (43m 39s): The technology is pretty crazy. There's no two ways about it. So as the content industry continues to evolve, what do you envision for its future? And how do you see your company and its technology playing a role in shaping that future? Well,
Speaker 2 (43m 54s): That's where when I started this, I said I, I don't want to just create a product. I want to create services because I, I believe that everybody is gonna want to implement AI into their business models in, in various ways. And there's so many different ways to do it right now, and there's so few people that are really trained or have the experience, especially in the adult industry. There's, there's not many that know much about AI at all right now.
Speaker 1 (44m 21s): Yeah. So you see yourself working with a lot of other companies. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (44m 25s): I want to, I want to become the AI source of the adult industry.
Speaker 1 (44m 29s): Well, it sounds like you're definitely leading in that regard, because I don't see anybody else stepping up like you are in ai.
Speaker 2 (44m 38s): Well, it's a dangerous game. There's so much, so much risk. And that's where I think I have a little bit of a advantage because I have solid relationships with so many people in the industry. I don't think an outsider could come in and immediately say, Hey, I I'm not gonna abuse this. You could trust me. You know, the average person's gonna say, I don't never heard of you. I don't trust you as far as I could throw you.
Speaker 1 (45m 3s): Isn't that the case though, an adult? I mean, you really need to have credibility to do anything in this industry.
Speaker 2 (45m 11s): I mean, that's, it all comes down to that.
Speaker 1 (45m 13s): Well, we've seen it all before, haven't we? How many people have we seen come take from the industry and then leave
Speaker 2 (45m 20s): Lots? And that's where when I see I get Facebook requests and I see that, hey, we have 30 people in that we both know that is a person I'll, I'll admit right, right now. Like yeah, if you're friends with my friends, you're gonna be my friend too. But if I see someone pop in that out of the blue, yeah, probably not. You might need to explain who you are and what you want first.
Speaker 1 (45m 44s): So they haven't thrown you off Facebook yet, huh?
Speaker 2 (45m 46s): Oh ma, many, many times
Speaker 1 (45m 49s): I finally gave up. I'm, I'm not playing Zucks game anymore.
Speaker 2 (45m 53s): Well, when, when Mark Womack died, I deliberately posted the picture of Mark Triumphantly displaying his nuts for the world in a giant group picture from Mexico. And I got banned immediately and it was worth every minute, you know, it was my my way to say goodbye to Mark.
Speaker 1 (46m 16s): Oh boy. And you did a, you did it good. You did it. Good. Well, hey Steve, a great talk. I'd like to thank you for being our guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk. We got over all the technical issues and I hope we'll have a chance to do it again soon.
Speaker 2 (46m 31s): Thanks. Yeah, I'll check back in with you after Deepfake is more established and let you know how it's going.
Speaker 1 (46m 37s): Sounds good. My Broker tip today is part nine. What to do to make your site more valuable for when you decide to sell it later. Last week, we talked about what information to provide a potential buyer. Here's more. Tell them what's special or different about your site. How is it unique? Make sure and include a list of all the websites you're selling in addition to any domains that come along with the sale. Is there anything that adds value to the sale? Provide them with any additional information upon request.
Before giving a buyer any information. Have them sign a non-disclosure agreement. If you use a Broker, the NDA will be provided for you. Good brokers, like maybe, I don't know, Adult, Site, Broker have a large resource of potential buyers that are looking for properties just like yours and they know how to deal with potential buyers. They'll also negotiate the terms of the sale, such as the price and any payment terms before closing the sale. Find a good escrow service to make sure that both the buyer and the seller are protected.
We have those resources of course. Let's talk about some of the factors that influence the sale price of a website. Number one is always profit. It will be a multiple of the profit and that multiple is based on whether the profit is trending up or down and how fast it's trending up or down. I've seen valuations of as much as five times, although that's very rare. Normally it's in the two and a half to four times area. I've also seen valuations of one time if the prophet is taking a nose dive.
We'll talk about this subject more next week and next week we'll be speaking with Kevin Stoltz of Eroticism Magazine. And that's it for this week's Adult Site Broker Talk. I'd once again like to thank my guest, Steve Lightspeed. Talk to you again next week on Adult Site. Broker Talk. I'm Bruce Friedman.
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