Ai Uehara, Stable Diffusion AI, And Her 'Ai Uehara Project'

Career to a degree like pretty much no one else ever before.

Not just in Japan, the country where she came from, but also worldwide. Ai Uehara is best known for being an adult performer, debuting in 2011 around the age of 19, before retiring in 2016.

But despite her short career in JAV, Ai Uehara is considered an icon.

After all, she had appeared in more than 1,000 films.

Upon retiring, she used her fame to venture onwards, beyond the adult industry, to become an influencer, a model, a businesswoman and an investor.

And in this case, she also becomes an NFT creator.

Born in Fukuoka Prefecture in 1992, raised in Tokyo, Ai was a university student, before she was scouted by a talent agency, following her friend introduced her to the Japanese Adult Video industry.

This was when she was given her 'Ai Uehara' stage name. The president of her agency gave this name to her because of she resembles Japanese actress and idol Ai Kato Japanese singer and actress Takako Uehara.

Unlike most of her peers in JAV, many of whom just showed up at the set for a quick money and leave, AI does the opposite.

She would star in almost anything and everything, ranging from lesbian shorts, to double penetration, gangbangs, uncensored pornography, and more. Almost nothing is out of her reach.

This makes her presence so ubiquitous, regardless of what content or fetish people have, there is a high chance that she would star in those.

After winning several accolades, including the DMM's 2013 annual AV actress ranking, and the DMM Awards 2014 for the Platinum Award for Best Actress, Ai was also involved in various other projects.

"I want to show the human side, not the machine," she once said.

She then modelled, and also involved in 3D avatar modelling.

In order to reach more of her fans, she created her own Twitter and Instagram accounts, and also opened a YouTube channel of her own.

Ai then becomes a businesswoman, and a producer.

One of which, was in April 2023, when she started the "AI Uehara Project", a project that utilizes AI to create representations of herself.

She used photos of herself during her modelling and during her work as an adult performer, to train Stability AI's Stable Diffusion to then create new photos of her, which were then minted as NFTs.

In order to make the photos lifelike, Ai utilized LoRA, which stands for Low-Rank Adaptation.

This AI model allows users to use low-rank adaptation technology to quickly fine-tune diffusion models. The LoRA training model makes it easier to train Stable Diffusion on different concepts, such as characters or a specific style.

Read: The 'Stable Diffusion' AI Brings Text-To-Image Generator To The Public, For Free

These trained models then can be exported and used by others in their own generations.

Simply put, LoRA refers to a technology that aligns images to a specific pattern by having an AI model learn from several additional photos.

"By creating my own NFT with AI, I can express my uniqueness and authenticity while contributing to the development of open-source AI art," she said in a Medium post.

She then held the "Ai Uehara AI Image Contest," to see who could generate an image that looked just like herself.

After the contest was announced, she also released an AI Photobook, which was created in collaboration with AI communities.

The contest results, which were shared in another Medium post by Ai, showcased not only Ai as the model the AI generated, but also the capacity of Diffusion AI model, which managed to create lifelike representation of Ai.

This photobook is then sold only as an Amazon Kindle e-book.

This photobook was ranked number one in the paid category of Kindle's "Ranking of Best Selling Art, Architecture, and Design Paintings."

"Image-generating AI is truly amazing," she said.

"This photobook is a beautiful and epoch-making piece, so I want all my fans, and everyone interested in AI, to see it!"

She then plans to utilize AI further for her future projects.

"This time, we created a photobook with image-generating AI, but language-generating AI like ChatGPT and voice-generating AI are also evolving," she explained. "In the future, I want to create a 'moving, talking Uehara AI' that not only learns my appearance, but also my voice and personality."

"The possibilities of what can be done with AI are endless."

In the world where deepfake images of celebrities can spread fake news and become major problems, Ai Uehara had her own thoughts about it.

While she does agree that AI can infringe content and "affect our reputation and privacy," she also said that that countermeasures by regulating AI development and users are neither easy nor effective.

"That's why instead of fearing or fighting AI, let's embrace it and use it."