I always enjoy writing up a short yearly review as the new year approaches, and overall this one has been a pretty good year for me though not without its inevitable challenges. There have been some fun (and hot) photoshoots this year, but I sometimes joke that my lower back will eventually be the downfall of T’s in Trouble. I now make sure I always have Tylenol and Ibuprofen on hand at every photoshoot – for me, not for the models (unless they need it). I’m doing all right, but of course the years just keep passing. I’m sure many of you are in the same boat and know just what I mean. But I plan to keep going as long as I can, putting those sissy gurls through the wringer!

Bound to Tease – Recently my friend Babette from Bound to Tease retired from running her site but she was extremely generous and gave me her domain name. So some of you may have noticed that when you click on Babette’s website that it forwards to mine. She’s completely aware of this and in fact it was her idea – very nice of her and I appreciate the extra traffic!

The Year of AI – As Time magazine reports, this is the year that AI really took off. It’s really only this year that I’ve started to use ChatGPT and Copilot for some tasks (though not for pics or videos). And every time I use one of these services, I’m amazed at how good they are. At the same time, I have very mixed feelings about AI in general. It’s an incredible technology but where is it leading us? Are we doomed to have an endless stream of mediocre computer-generated imagery infect our phones and computers and TV screens? The answer to that one is a resounding yes — yes, we are!

I’ve certainly saved a number of sexy AI-generated pics for the wank bank. Some of them are really hot. But overall so much AI imagery is, well, crap. The term slop really is perfect for it. I don’t want to complain endlessly here about AI imagery as there are already lots of articles criticizing the AI aesthetic. Some of the worst examples are in advertising where a person is walking through an obviously AI-generated crowd or environment with its plasticky, heightened feel. There’s often a creepy feel to the whole thing. This McDonald’s commercial, for example, is technically very impressive and also aesthetically pretty bad. McDonald’s finally pulled the ad after numerous complaints.

Earlier this year I considered using AI just for fun to rework some of my own still images – and I still might – but I finally decided not to mainly because of the ethical questions involved. And hey, I get it that talking about the problematic aspect of AI can be a buzzkill. Obviously, all the imagery you see on AI is taken from other works and reconfigured. In this way, it’s similar to the tube sites like BoundHub where the vast majority of videos are stolen and reposted without permission by users. It’s the stealing that’s the problem and AI steals nearly everything to train its models.

But I’m also a hypocrite since I’m very willing to use AI for computer coding. Just last week I used ChatGPT to put together a few lines of code I needed on my website. It wasn’t a difficult task but I’m not a programmer at all. Normally I would spend thirty minutes, maybe more, researching the issue online and then would write my webhost and ask them if I had the code right and I would have to wait an hour or a day for them to write back and hope that I understood their answer. Using ChatGPT, though, it took minutes to come up with the code, and I could easily refine it till it was right. Again, this was a fairly simple example, but it worked so well, and I’ll certainly use ChatGPT again for other coding tasks. In spite of the ethical questions, you don’t see me not using it.

But it’s this moral messiness that makes me uneasy about AI. And just the sense that in the long run this technology, while doing amazing things, will almost inevitably cause a lot of harm and suffering in the workplace and in the world in general. Of course, by then we may all end up enslaved, or worse, by our own creation. But the memes will be effortless! There’s clearly no stopping whatever is to come, good and bad. And yes, I know that similar dangers were predicted with the arrival of the printing press and movies and TV. But somehow this feels different with far more unknowns and a balls-to-the-wall push forward in development.

As an aside, another annoying side effect of AI imagery is that I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen a video online and had to stop and question, “Is this real?” Usually after a moment it’s like, “No, it’s just more AI crap.” But some of it is so hard to distinguish that I get a sense that civilization is ultimately doomed. Many have already pointed out the death of truth years ago (even Andor). AI will only continue to accelerate the trend.

And of course, I’ll probably eventually fall in love with my AI chatbot anyway, like Joaquin Phoenix in “Her.” I saw my friend Sybil a few weeks ago and she would ask her phone questions, and the most intelligent sounding and appealing female voice would reply, and with a sexy British accent. I know it’s an illusion, but I couldn’t believe how much it felt like talking to a real person. Once they perfect an AI verbal dominatrix that isn’t lame, I’ll probably sign up for $29.95 a month and be a goner. Grok will probably soon be there so I should be careful.

Age Verification – On a related topic, there’s the ongoing struggle with implementing age verification which has been much more technical for me than I ever expected (something I’ve said way too many times on this blog). I’ll almost certainly use ChatGPT to figure it out in my ample spare time since the programmer I was hoping to hire has since become unavailable. Thankfully I’m a small website that doesn’t get much attention, and my website is not nearly as explicit as hardcore porn sites, but still the potential legal risks from all the new laws are worrisome. Again, I’m probably not supposed to mention VPNs but I’m sure the VPN companies must love these poorly designed laws!

Thank You – So on that somewhat worried note, let me again thank everyone who supports Trannies in Trouble. I appreciate everyone who follows the site, or follows me on social media, and I especially could not do it without those of you who are paying subscribers – I owe you all my sincere thanks. And again, I’ll continue for as long as I can shooting new scenes. In the meantime, I hope everyone is able to be with friends and family over the holidays and have a delightful time. Here’s looking to more excitement, and more inevitable changes, good and bad, in the year ahead!