The ‘Zero Tolerance’ Policies project (article in progress)

In this project I started at Microsoft Research during my internship with Tarleton Gillespie, I investigate the risks of the “Zero Tolerance” policies on pornographic websites towards illustrated CSAM, asking: how is the complicated subject of illustrated child pornography taken into consideration in these moderation documents? And how are animated porn content creators victims of strict yet imprecise policies towards animated content, now performed using fraught automated detection technologies?

Examining the Ethical Differences Between Deepfake Pornography and Pornographic animation (upcoming article & poster presentation at the Shaping AI for Just Futures Conference)

While the non-autonomous process of pornographic images’ generation using deep learning algorithms (now referred to as deepfake pornography) has been criticized for its exploitative methods, the lines between what we intuitively consider acceptable as pornographic animation versus deepfake pornography have yet to be theorized. Using the example of Ariana Grande’ sThis project interrogates which considerations over media governance over AI images emerge when we situate deepfake pornographic videos in the trajectory of animated media? Then asking, which further ethical regulatory potentials can emerge when this image operation is considered as a labor practice?

I am conducting this project as part of my Doctoral Fellowship in AI and Inclusion at the University of Ottawa AI + Society Initiative, hosted by the Canadian Robotics and AI Ethical Design Lab (CRAiEDL.ca).

Very NSFW Ariana Grande’s Fortnite character manipulation example here.

The manufacturing of pornographic animation: the labor of animated porn content producers (upcoming conference presentation)

Nowadays, porn animation holds a comparable prevalence to non-porn animation in the digital landscape, albeit circulating on less visible and often hyper-specialized platforms. However, the particular challenges faced by animated porn content producers have yet to be examined, so although their condition as porn workers who manufacture, instead of acting, pornographic imagery complicate how we have understood sex work up until now. Centering manufactured pornography over live-action’s offers a productive framework to think about the future of creative industries in an increasingly artificially-produced digital landscape.

Related publications:

• Aurélie Petit (2023), “List of sexual and erotic animation films” in Medium. https://medium.com/@aurelievirginiepetit/sexual-and-erotic-animation-films-3fb46f63c875

• Aurélie Petit (2019), “Enjeux économiques et industriels de l’animation pornographique et érotique française” in Revue française des sciences de l’information et de la communication, dossier « L’animation comme industrie culturelle ? Concevoir et produire le dessin animé », n°18, pp. 1-16. https://doi.org/10.4000/rfsic.8166

ENGLISH VERSION HERE

Negative Networks: Investigating the history of Japanese animation fandom and sociotechnical uses (dissertation)

My dissertation examines how computer-mediated communications in online Japanese animation communities have normalized women-exclusionary practices beyond their own digital spaces. Looking first into Usenet discussions examining the making of Japanese-inspired forums 4chan and 8chan throughout the 2000s, I establish that Japanese animation forum users in the U.S played a defining role in shaping what we now call anti-feminist toxic technocultures. Understanding this history is a needing addition to our common knowledge of online cultures, and one that challenges assumption of these behaviors as novelty, instead of socio-technologically constructed over more than thirty years.

Related publications:

• Aurélie Petit (2022), “Do female anime fans exist?”: The impact of women-exclusionary discourses on rec.arts.anime in Internet Histories, Volume 6, Issue 4, pp. 352-368. https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2022.2109265

• Aurélie Petit (2020), Review of The Anime Boom in the United States in Synoptique: An Online Journal of Film and Moving Images Studies, “Animating LGBTQ+ Representations: Queering the Production of Movement”, volume 9, n°1, pp. 129-131.

Hentai Streaming Platform Wars (article under submission)

My project on the platformization of Japanese pornographic animation or “hentai” examines the digital fights between actors with financial incentives in the hentai streaming market. It is a case study emblematic of the undefined cultural industry of pornographic animation, where regulatory practices struggle to be established as normative. There I argue that unless regulation is contextualized to the need of its industry, it will never be successfully applied.

Related publications:

• Aurélie Petit (2022) WIP. Hentai Streaming Platform Wars. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/364824171_WIP_The_Hentai_Streaming_Platform_Wars

• Aurélie Petit (2022), Anime Streaming Platform Wars. Platform Lab Research Report. Issue 1. https://www.theplatformlab.com/reports