The shoppable social media platform, SecondPix, launched two new major features within the past two weeks as it continues to expand its reach in the Second Life community. 

Despite that undertaking, Dema Fairport also finds herself involved in–or at the very least  adjacent to–one of the great existential debates of our time–the use of AI. For Fairport specifically, she remains concerned about how it’s used in SL. The potential use on her platform has met a firm ‘no’ every time. On a recent Sunday, she met with me to discuss this yet again, even as she oversaw one of the major projects she had released.

In late July, it launched a weekly shopping event where each week, users can post one featured product with tagged items that include links to an SL Marketplace link and/or in-world store. A new event will launch every Saturday and end the following Friday.

“I am really excited to open this up to everyone! Stores are already paying too much for events,” wrote Fairport.  “And I don’t want to add to the burden everyone already has!”

On August 3rd,  it launched its Group feature. The free function allows users to establish a group with a theme of their choice, invite other users and create a group photo pool. Each photo can appear in 30 groups. In a conversation with inKLine Media, Fairport said that the Group feature was the “missing piece.” 

SecondPix.com went live on June 13th with the underlying goal of showcasing dedicated photographers, directing potential customers to the items featured in those photos, and increasing the visibility while hopefully lowering costs for creators. By early July, SecondPix celebrated a milestone when it reached 3,000 users.

Even before the June go-live, Fairport publicly took a hard stance against the increasingly prevalent use of AI in SL. The debate on AI is not unique to SL. As AI evolves, its use has become a polarizing topic in the world at large.

“AI generated images have no place here,” wrote Fairport in a May post on the site’s Facebook page, “not because we are against anything, but because this platform exists entirely for what you create with your own vision and your own talent.”

Despite objections from some users, Fairport engaged with the community in early July, specifically on the use of AI-generated backgrounds. Her stance, however, remained the same. In her announcement on the site’s Discord channel, she stated:

“What doesn’t belong, however, is an image that was never inside Second Life at all,” wrote Fairport.

As she leads SecondPix forward, Fairport still maintains her own shop, Mysa. And in spite of what appears to be a tremendous workload, Fairport reports that SecondPix continues to grow at impressive rates. As of the writing of this story, Fairport said that over 3,500 users have joined SecondPix

You can check out SecondPix and join it too by clicking the link here.