So, I’m just talking about whether-or-not the end game is going to be local or remote compute. I’m not saying that one can’t generate pornography locally, but asking whether people will do that, whether the norm will be to run generative AI software locally (the “personal computer” model that came to the fore in the mid-late 1970s and on or so) or remotely (the “mainframe” model, which mostly preceded it).

Yes, one can generate pornography locally…but what if the choice is between a low-resolution, static SDXL (well, or derived model) image or a service that leverages compute to get better images or something like real-time voice synth, recognition, dialogue, and video? I mean, people can get static pornography now in essentially unbounded quantities on the Internet; It is in immense quantity; if someone spent their entire lives going through it, they’d never, ever see even a tiny fraction of it. Much of it is of considerably greater fidelity than any material that would have been available in, say, the 1980s; certainly true for video. Yet…even in this environment of great abundance, there are people subscribing to commercial (traditional) pornography services, and getting hardware and services to leverage generative AI, even though there are barriers in time, money, and technical expertise to do so.

And I’d go even further, outside of erotica, and say that people do this for all manner of things. I was really impressed with Wolfenstein 3D when it came out. Yet…people today purchase far more powerful hardware to run 3D video games. You can go and get a computer that’s being thrown out that can probably run dozens of simultaneous instances of Wolfenstein 3D concurrently…but virtually nobody does so, because there’s demand for the new entertainment material that the new software and hardware permits for.