‘We want to […] build AI that enhances our creators’ experience and doesn’t cannibalize them’ – OnlyFans

Toronto – June 18, 2024

AI-generated content creators won’t be colonizing OnlyFans anytime soon.

That’s according to CEO Keily Blair (pictured above), who has said that the company is “trying to figure out what’s the opportunity and what’s the threat” associated with integrating AI into their platform, but is ruling out avatars that might compete with human content creators for attention or engagement.

Speaking at Collision in Toronto, Keily said: “When we think about AI integration into our platform, we want to be very sensitive to build AI that enhances our creators’ experience and doesn’t cannibalize them”.

The CEO went on to say that if the company was to, for example, create AI avatars for the platform, it would be “competing with creators for that attention, for those eyeballs, and we don’t want to do that”.

Ideally, AI integration for OnlyFans would enhance the user experience, but also be transparent, so users are aware that artificial intelligence is being used. But this is something further down the line.

“We haven’t cracked that nut yet, so I don’t want to pretend that we have all the answers to the questions here, but [AI integration is] something that we’re actively working on, and we’re listening to our creator community,” said Keily.

The CEO warned that it is vital to understand what the company’s user base needs and respond to that “rather than just plowing ahead as a business and doing what we think is the right thing to do”.

Keily’s comments come amid the growing rise of AI integration into social media and content creation platforms.

Speaking more about the pros and cons of introducing AI-generated content creators or avatars to the platform, Keily said: “If you have a wholly AI-generated content creator, the question is then about who owns that content? Who is the primary financial beneficiary of that content? How do you create a connection with a fan base of an AI personality?

“And then there’s the nerdy lawyer in me who gets worried about copyright and consent and all of those other things that are still playing out in the AI world,” added Keily.

Speaking on Collision’s PandaConf stage, Keily also addressed the company’s efforts to change people’s understanding of the OnlyFans brand, saying: “I want the company to be a company [that] any single content creator who’s over 18 thinks: ‘I should have an OnlyFans page’.”

“My mission is to go beyond the preconceptions,” added the CEO. “It’s super easy to just tell the same story about what OnlyFans is. But actually, we’re an incredibly inclusive, incredibly diverse platform that is open to everybody who is creator-focused and creator-friendly.

Keily, however, also acknowledged the adult content creators that make up a sizable portion of the platform’s user base: “The other thing that is really dear to my heart is financial inclusion for our adult content creators. So a lot of our adult content creators face an incredible amount of stigmatization and discrimination on a societal basis, but also in financial services institutions.”

Keily’s comments were made as part of a wider discussion on AI at Collision, which is returning to Toronto for its sixth year. Global founders, CEOs, investors and members of the media have come to the city to make deals and experience North America’s thriving tech ecosystem.

More than 1,600 startups are taking part in Collision 2024 – the highest number of startups ever at a Collision event. 45 percent of these are women-founded, and startups have travelled to Toronto from countries including Nigeria, the Republic of Korea, Uruguay, Japan, Italy, Ghana, Pakistan and beyond.

In total, more than 37,800 attendees have gathered at the event, as well as 570 speakers and 1,003 members of the media, to explore business opportunities with an international audience.

739 investors are attending Collision, including Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures; Wesley Chan, co-founder and managing partner of FPV Ventures; and Nigel Morris, co-founder and managing partner of QED Investors, as well as nine companies on the Forbes Midas List, and 12 investors from those firms.

Top speakers at Collision include:
● Geoffrey Hinton, Godfather of AI
● Maria Sharapova, entrepreneur and tennis legend
● Aidan Gomez, founder and CEO of Cohere (an AI for enterprise and large language model company, which raised US$450 million at a US$5 billion valuation in June 2024)
● Raquel Urtasun, founder and CEO of Waabi (a Canadian autonomous trucking company)
● Jeff Shiner, CEO of 1Password (a cloud-based password management tool)
● Dali Rajic, president and COO of Wiz (a cloud security platform)
● Alex Israel, co-founder and CEO of Metropolis (an AI and computer vision platform)
● Jonathan Ross, founder and CEO of Groq (an AI chip startup)
● Keily Blair, CEO of OnlyFans
● Autumn Peltier, Indigenous rights activist

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Useful links
Collision website: https://collisionconf.com/ 
Collision media kit: https://collisionconf.com/media/media-kit  
Collision images: https://flickr.com/photos/collisionconf 
About Web Summit: www.about.websummit.com