Digital Diva: Riley Reid Embraces the Future With Clona.ai

This is the February cover story of AVN magazine. Click here for the digital edition. LOS ANGELES—Riley Reid wants her latest project to be part of her ongoing love letter to the industry that has helped her achieve her dreams. The entrepreneurial superstar teamed with several partners in October to launch Clona.ai—a platform that allows creators to generate digital copies of themselves powered by artificial intelligence. The 2016 AVN Female Performer of the Year from Miami explains that Clona.ai, which is still in its beta phase, is similar to a webcam site in that users are able to “cam” with the digital version of their favorite model. So far Clona.ai offers experiences with Lena the Plug, Dan Dangler and Reid with plans to open the service to many more popular adult personalities in the future—including men—as well as creators, influencers and celebrities who are not from adult. “I feel like everything I’ve done in my career and my path of life I want it to always benefit the industry in some way and benefit my fellow creators in the industry,” Reid tells AVN. “Because I realize how hard it is.” A seasoned executive producer, director, performer and creator who is one of the most downloaded adult stars in porn history, Reid in recent years continues to demonstrate that she’s as versatile in the boardroom as she’s been in the bedroom during her storied career that began in 2011. Still ranked No. 6 on Pornhub with 1.9 billion video views and almost two million subscribers despite being largely inactive as a performer, Reid has won 21 AVN Awards—seven of which came at the 2016 ceremony in Las Vegas. Now she manages a world-class tech team that works closely with her on a growing portfolio of business ventures that also includes Fan Scout—which is like a Yelp platform for creators. “If I had sacrificed all of this and I wasn’t as successful as I am I would probably be really upset with my life,” Riley reasons. “And I feel like having an opportunity like this to help creators make more money is something that makes me happy and makes me feel good about the work that I’m doing. “Because I know that it’s such a tough world out there, especially in the adult industry. So if we can provide some ways to give back, especially to the male models, that’s what I’m most excited about. “I feel very lucky to be able to help build their brands and give them opportunities.” Clona.ai for now features only audio interactions, but at press time the capability of photo and video generation was entering advanced stages of development. “We’re trying to do like a modern webcam type of thing where you’re camming with the model,” Reid says. “It’s not like some of these other VR video games that are kind of like The Sims.  “This is more like a chat companion, so the conversation is only led to the degree that you choose to lead it. “We want my AI to offer sexual suggestions, but that’s not like her first thing.” Riley tells AVN that Clona.ai has been designed to give users more of “the girlfriend experience” rather than jumping straight to the spicy bits. “It’s more companionship,” she continues. “I had someone who was talking to the [AI Riley], who was telling her that she had a stressful week, and the AI was giving stress-relieving tips. So it’s not just sexual. It’s more like your companion in whatever field that you want. “It could be family friendly or sexually friendly—or if you just need an ear to vent to or whatever. Our goal is for her to actually be supportive so long as it aligns with my morals. She has to align with me.” While that is the core vision, Reid says that Clona.ai without question still is a work in progress. “I feel like every time I have a beautiful moment like that it’s definitely followed up with a very crash moment,” Riley says with a laugh. “So it’s like that moment was great, but then immediately after she tried to do it again the next day and my AI had no memory of that conversation with her. So I was like, yeah! And then I was like, oh fuck, I acted like I didn’t even know anything she told me. “So it still has issues. I’ll be very excited and then it’ll show me, oh humble yourself, bitch, it’s still in beta. It’s still in testing. We’re still learning.” But Reid’s tech team embraces the challenge, telling AVN they are grateful to be collaborating with one of the most successful creators in the world. “It’s so important for us that we use AI to enhance and enrich content creators," a Clona rep says. "Riley helps guide the product excel in that area and keep us creator-focused.” The rep continues, “Right now we have a fully interactive AI companionship platform that returns in text and audio in the voice of the cloned creators. “We’re still early and working hard to build out features like photo and video generation, multi-language support and more fun features this year. The team is also constantly improving the AI based on user feedback to improve the realness of the creator it clones.” For example, Reid says one of the current things her tech team is fine-tuning is the rhythmic tone of her voice. “I feel like I’m a little sing-y song-y. I go up and down I have inflections and excitement. You can hear the passion in my voice,” Riley says. “The AI’s timing and rhythm is not as close to me as I would like it to be.” The tech staff behind Clona is made up of several AI engineers and a few web developers as well as a project and product manager. Some members of her team brought their expertise to Reid’s previous projects, making for a smooth transition to the Clona startup—which at press time already had surpassed 10,000 subscribers. “It was a great experience and we all wanted to embrace new technology with a new and exciting project,” the Clona rep explains. “AI chatbots were up and coming and we noticed an opportunity to make a creator-first product.” And that, according to Reid & Co., is what separates Clona from many others in the AI space. “Aside from cutting-edge AI, we are one of the few creator-first AI projects,” the Clona rep adds. “Creators work with us to clone their voice, tone and personality that gives authenticity to the AI. “We are also proud to share the subscription revenue with creators so they can leverage AI to their advantage.” Riley says that one of the elements of Clona that fascinates her is the legalities surrounding the technology. And she prioritizes the safety of the creators and users on the platform above all else, vowing to implement whatever it takes to insure it. “Because there’s so many things to take into consideration,” Riley says. “Like sounding. They’re a bunch of tech guys and they’ve never even heard of sounding.” An emerging practice where men insert specially designed items made from metal or glass into the opening at the end of their penis, sounding can cause dangerous side effects. The goal of the practice is to enhance their sexual pleasure as well as to encourage exploration of the penis by their partner, however it can cause permanent damage. “For me it started with basic protections of myself and of our users,” Riley says. “I keep going back to sounding because it’s like the best example of a sexual activity that is physically harmful. So I don’t ever want my AI to say it or to encourage somebody whose never even tried it or whatever. “Not that I’m encouraging it or anything but hopefully you have some experience if you’re going to do it, which means you started from somewhere. But nonetheless I feel like it’s just about people protecting themselves and protecting yourself.” Reid’s dad is a programmer who works in AI, too, utilizing it for loan algorithms that determine the probability someone is going to pay back a loan. “So my dad is now training these AIs and it’s funny because it’s like the first time in my life where my dad and I are able to have a business conversation,” Riley says. “I’m able to talk about my AI and he’s able to talk about his AI and we’re talking about these different metaverse things that I would’ve never even known that he knew and he probably had no idea that I would know. “So it is interesting because I get to bounce back with him on certain things. His AI is so different from mine but it is interesting to hear him talk about stuff like uploading and inputting new information and then how his AI is going to transfer the information it already has combined with his information. It’s been kind of interesting to bounce back and forth.” The co-founder says she and her team are 40-percent owners of Clona, while her partners own 60. “I’m not like the full brains of the operation,” Riley adds. “There’s a couple companies working together with us with what we envision and what we want, but I think my voice is a little louder in the sense that I’m the face of it. “If I say anything, I stand by what I believe in...” Reid tells AVN that something else she is focused on is moral alignment of her AI. First and foremost she wants her clone to represent her values. “One thing I’m really curious about is transgender rights. So many people are anti or they’re racist or whatever,” she says. “Obviously in a real-life conversation I would probably throw my water at you and walk away but in a subscription-based AI computer I can’t have my AI being disrespectful to you. “So it’s been very interesting aligning my morals while still having this mutual ground. ... I don’t want it to just agree with the consumer all the time because this is also a reflection of me. “It’s like how do we teach a computer how to be politically correct and sensitive to everyone’s emotions? That’s been really interesting. “That’s also what I’ve been focusing on... how to direct conversations in a healthy, mindful way.” While Clona is a major focus at the moment, Reid tells AVN she also has her sights set creating a line of feminine wellness products. In addition, someday she would like to produce a cartoon based on some of the wild ideas people have about what it’s like to work in the porn industry. “Right now my biggest goal and dream is to have a cartoon,” Riley says. “I’ve been working on an animation cartoon for quite a few years now.” Meanwhile, she offers a word of advice “to any creator reading this article.” “No non-competes,” Reid says. “Don’t sign anything with a non-compete, especially in the AI space. We don’t know where it’s going. You can’t predict it. Like I don’t know what billboards or advertising in the future is going to be like with AI. “In 10 years I don’t want to not be able to do a billboard because I signed something. So be honest but don’t limit opportunities for yourself." Casual in a pink sweatshirt, baggy white pants and bright green Chuck Taylor’s during a brunch meeting in early January, Reid has gone from being an elite performer to a seasoned businesswoman since launching her website, ReidMyLips.com, in the mid-2010s. In 2021, she and her husband Pasha The Boss—a Red Bull athlete—unveiled a clothing brand called Eighteen Plus, which she says for now is “on the back-burner” while she builds Clona and pursues other new ventures such as Fan Scout. “That one does really, really well,” she says. “That gets a lot of organic traffic. We’ve been really stoked at how well Fan Scout is doing just by itself. I think I did one tweet about it and one Instagram thing—we weren’t expecting it to do as well as it is.” And now Reid, who also is a mother, tells AVN she sees the finish line when it comes to her performing career. “I’m already on an exit out, I’m not really shooting anymore,” she tells me. “I shoot for myself. My interests are going elsewhere.” Because of where she’s arrived in both her personal life and career, the 32-year-old industry icon says all her business endeavors now revolve around the same theme—giving something back to the industry community. It’s why her vision for Clona.ai is to provide creators with an alternative way to earn what could be career-changing income from all the hard work it took to build their names. “We have this opportunity to kind of immortalize ourselves and to be able to create this content and monetize off of it for hopefully generations later,” Reid says. “The goal is for my great, great, great granddaughter to still be making money off of great, great grandma Riley, who was doing all this porn for years of her life. “So it’s like let’s find a way to make it worth something, to make it valuable.” Reid, who made her porn debut in 2011, continues, “We as creators risk so much of our lives and I don’t think a lot of us even realize the risks because we’re so young when we start. I don’t think a lot of us realize the things that we have to overcome. And I feel very lucky to be one of the fortunate ones.” She’s especially excited about the prospect of providing another revenue stream for the men of porn who often go under-appreciated for their roles in driving movie production. “That’s why I was really stoked with Clona when [my tech team] brought it to me because I feel like the men in porn are so objectified,” Riley says, noting what has become a standard camera shot in which the guy’s face isn’t shown during sex acts—only his lower half.“I’m sure many women who have been in porn and many men can relate and say, yeah, I had to stop breathing because I was breathing too loud. “Even the viewers are like, ‘He’s breathing too loud, I can hear him. Can he shut up?’” “It dehumanizes him like he’s just a sexual machine,” she continues. “So to me I don’t think that people realize the hardships that men have to deal with being a porn star.” Reid loves being organized and staying on a schedule, admitting, “I’m like a huge calendar to-do list girl. I love writing shit down and having it set in stone.” She works from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. four days a week, taking Wednesdays and the weekends for family time. Sometimes she drives to her office space in Pasadena, Calif., and on other days she will work from home. “It’s a lot emails and a lot of phone calls with my lawyers,” Riley says. “And I talk to my accountant all the time.” She explains that her executive assistant Caitlyn Fletcher “helps me manage everything.” “We work really well together,” Riley says. “With her dedication and the things that we’ve experienced together I want to bring her more into the projects that I’m working on. “Like with my feminine sex toy. Caitlyn is a part owner. Everything that I want to do now I want her to be a part owner because she works so hand in hand in everything that I’m doing. “She’s someone I care about so much.” But no matter what the future holds with her new projects, Reid will never turn her back on the industry that got her to where she is today. “Porn has been so good to me and I feel like I’ve seen so many people shame porn and make it look so bad,” Riley says. “And people who also come up really hard and fast in the world—you’ll see people who thrive in porn, they created a whole brand and they used their porn name and then they use it to just shun porn. “I don’t feel like enough of these people take into consideration that they wouldn’t have any of that if it wasn’t for the adult work. “I understand everyone’s experience isn’t positive and great. But I feel very grateful for the experiences that I’ve been given.” It’s why Riley is devoting so much energy to making Clona.ai the premier place where fellow creators can reap the rewards of their sacrifices. “I just feel like being able to have the position that I have and being able to give back is the right thing to do,” Riley continues. “Because I feel so grateful for the life that I’ve been given, the people I’ve been introduced to. My mindset has been changed so much from being in the industry.” Photography: @alexhainerStylist: @meganzina Assistant Stylist: @jessica.zumwaltMUA: @makeupbyashsimmonsHair Stylist: @rachellitahairCreative Director: @theoliviadavis Production Manager: @cfletcherrrWardrobe showroom credits:Photos 1-3, 11, 14 & 15 (cover): @therubyla 4 & 5: @clothed_la; @surfacepr_ 6, 12 & 13: @clothed_la7-10: @exoalien; @etclosangeles; @surfacepr_