Pornhub Remasters Century-old Erotic Films for a Modern Audience

Pornhub, the world’s largest adult network, launched today Remastured: an innovative project employing the latest technology to restore some of the oldest – and steamiest – erotic films ever produced. Because if you thought our generation was kinky... wait until you see how they got it on back in the day.

While you might think of dirty videos as something from modern times, the truth is that people have been shooting porn since the birth of the motion picture in the late 1800’s. And though the earliest examples may feature things as timid as a kiss (which was – in fact – considered pornographic at the time), erotic films quickly evolved to encompass all the categories one can find on Pornhub.com today. But more than just here for our viewing pleasure, these films can tell us a lot how sex has been portrayed on screen throughout the last century. That’s why the brand decided to colorise and restore this porn from the past, using the technology of the future.

With the help of artificial intelligence, now virtually anyone can colorise even the most antique footage. Unfortunately, when it comes to things like the subtle shades of nipples, penises and all the turn-of-the-century bush, the algorithms simply lack the experience. That’s because standard deep-learning models used to colorise most antique films have been trained with nearly a million SFW images, and unlike Pornhub’s users, are unable to understand nudity, including the subtle shades of nipples, genitalia, and all that unkempt pubic hair from the turn-of-the-century. 

That’s why Pornhub teamed up with creative agency Officer & Gentleman and creative studio Espadaysantacruz, to try something totally new. Together, they used 100,000 adult images from pornhub.com give their AI a sexual education and teach it a dirty new trick: how to colorise vintage porn for a modern audience. The result is the Remastured Film Library: A collection of 20 visually stunning scenes ranging from the 1890’s to the 1940’s, featuring the work of film pioneers like Thomas Edison and George Méliès. 

Visit the Remastured Film Library here.

According to Javi Iñiguez de Onzoño, co-founder of Officer & Gentleman: “Working on this project was definitely an eye-opening experience. Not only did we get a crash course on the tech behind restoring these old films from the amazing team at Espadaysantacruz, but we got a completely new perspective on just what kind of wild stuff our ancestors may – or may not – have been into.”