The Economist.
Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist.
I'm your host Jason Palmer.
Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.
On Monday, we told you about Syria a year after its brutal civil war concluded.
We didn't mention was that tourism numbers are ticking back up.
In Syria, and just about everywhere else that atrocities have happened, so-called dark tourists follow.
And for all of America's visible divisions, there's one that runs incredibly deep.
Sure there are political alignments around it, but it's more basic, more fundamental, more about lawn care.
First up, though.
Right down through history, you know what people do when they're presented with a new communication technology?
They make and distribute smut.
Not long after Gutenberg invented the printing press, saucy pamphlets were hot off the press.
When rolls of film gave way to videotape in the 70s, the porn industry put out releases a year before Hollywood did.
Porn and technology go together hand in riding crop in glove.
Now that generative AI is in the picture, I probably don't need to tell you what's going on.
While the rest of us about whether we want to use AI for work,
the porn industry is getting to work very quickly deploying the technology.
Avanti is our global business writer.
Some of the analysts I've spoken to have said that they think AI-driven pornographic content will be worth $2.5 billion this year.