PORN WITHOUT PEOPLE
Step into the limitless possibilities of porn without people. Elevate your personal entertainment experience not with bodies, but with virtual, customisable and immersive fantasies built from code and unconstrained by the mess and risk of human harm.
What happens when the world’s most intimate industry no longer needs people at all?
Tilly Lawless
Tilly Lawless is a queer, Sydney-based sex worker and writer. Her writing appears in The New World, The Guardian and in her fortnightly column for Prospect Magazine. Her debut title, Nothing But My Body, was published in 2021, followed by her second novel, Thora, in 2024. She is also a contributor to On Sex Work, a Common Room Editions Reader.
Dan Miller
Dan Miller, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at James Cook University. His research examines how emerging technologies, including AI-generated media, shape human behaviour, wellbeing, and society. He has published extensively on the impacts of porn and on human detection of deepfakes. He was also the Australian collaborator on the International Sex Survey, a large-scale survey which investigated sexual wellbeing among 80,000 participants from over 40 nations.
Patrick Stokes
Patrick Stokes is associate professor of philosophy at Deakin University in Melbourne, and a writer, radio producer and media commentator on philosophical topics. His most recent book is Digital Souls: A Philosophy of Online Death (Bloomsbury, 2021).
Emily van der Nagel
Emily van der Nagel is a Lecturer in Social Media at the School of Media, Film & Journalism at Monash University. She researches social media, platform studies, and digital intimacies. Her second book, OnlyFans, will be published in November 2026. Emily is a commencing DECRA Fellow with the Australian Research Council, undertaking a project titled, Social, ethical and regulatory challenges in the social media porn industry.
Aubrey Blanche
Aubrey Blanche is, at heart, a deep thinker who refuses to believe that we cannot choose to build a world better than the one we’ve inherited. Her academic studies have always focused on understanding the causes of harm to the most vulnerable, and have included research on terrorism, defense contracting and military strategy, and the impact of AI applications on queer and disabled users. She spent more than 13 years in multinational technology companies advising on issues of organisational responsibility before joining The Ethics Centre as Director of Ethical Advisory & Strategic Partnerships. She is an advisor to global organisations seeking to scale in an ethical way, with an emphasis on equitable talent practices, justice-aligned ESG approaches, and responsible AI governance. She is a regular writer and speaker on issues of ethics in business, finance, and technology and a masters student in AI Ethics and Society at the University of Cambridge.
We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation - the custodians of the country on which we meet - and acknowledge their Elders, past and present.
The views and opinions expressed by the Festival participants are not necessarily the views of The Ethics Centre and our partners.