Giulia, the founder of Blushdesk, kindly agreed to this interview.

Blushdesk is a generative AI-powered virtual assistant built specifically for sex workers by a sex worker to manage client communication. You set it up by defining your rates, boundaries, FAQs, and tone of voice, so it knows exactly how you want to present yourself and what is and is not allowed. Instead of acting like a generic chatbot, it is designed to sound like you and follow your rules.

Once configured, the AI handles incoming messages across WhatsApp, Telegram, and email. It replies instantly to common enquiries, filters out timewasters, and enforces your boundaries, for example deflecting inappropriate requests or answering routine questions like availability and rates. It never negotiates on your behalf or breaks the limits you have set.

You stay fully in control. You can review conversations at any time, step in whenever you want, and set triggers for when the AI should escalate a message to you, such as booking requests, VIP clients, or anything unusual. When it does hand over, you get the full conversation context, not a summary.

Technically, it runs on a self-hosted AI model with a strong focus on privacy and control. Messages are handled quickly, usually within a couple of seconds, and nothing requires the client to install anything. Clients simply message you as normal, while Blushdesk manages the conversation in the background.

You can activate Blushdesk temporarily when you're at the cinema, or with non SW friends, with family or you just feel like some uninterrupted me time to focus on reading a book or enjoying a holiday without distractions.

1) I've just been looking at Blushdesk and I'm very impressed! I tried out the demo version a few months ago and it worked perfectly. What I didn't realise is Blushdesk can answer on my behalf on Whatsapp, Telegram and via email? That's awesome. Without realising this was possible, I consulted the oracle (asked ChatGPT) last week “I'm sitting in the ruins of the ancient Roman forum of Zadar in the shade on a park bench by the sea. It's warm and sunny and I've been reading a Sci fi novel (Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Strife). Once upon a time, before mobile phones, I could have read a few hundred pages without looking up from the book. Almost completely immersed. Just aware of the warmth of the sun and sounds of birds and the sea. Now every time my phone buzzes, I have to check in case it's urgent. Part of my mind is always processing the last message and pre-empting the next one. In some cases if it's someone who needs me now, I want to know instantly. (hashtag first world problems. Zadar is paradise and the book is awesome. It's just that moments like that could be even better without distractions. Even if the distractions are people wanting to give me money) If it's someone wanting an hourly flat rental, I want to know right away because if they don't hear back in a few minutes, they'll rent from someone else and there are  lot of factors that go into whether I'll accept their booking or not that I wouldn't entrust to an AI (yet). To some clients I want to give my full attention to their message immediately and reply ASAP. But 99% of the time the messages I get are something that could have waited an hour or two. I need an AI assistant that knows the difference and can reply on my behalf via WhatsApp, or telegram, or signal or email and say "Oz is reading a book now. Do you need him urgently, or can this wait an hour or two?" I'd just like to have some uninterrupted me time sometimes. I'd like my attention span to be two hours again, not 2 minutes. I think that's the next gen of gen AI. I want a secretary smart enough to read and reply to messages for me on multiple platforms and know what I'm doing, what to tell people, figure out what's urgent, what isn't and how soon is soon enough for my attention. When can I have that?” It said that level of AI gatekeeper that's capable of integrating with the API on Whatsapp is years away. The Oracle was wrong! Blushdesk can already do all this?

Well the oracle certainly was wrong. BlushDesk can help you sort through the noise while you enjoy a beautiful book like Children of Strife. I personally use it and can tell you the mental breathing room I've gotten is more than worth it.

Using your example, you could read for hours and the only times the AI would call for you would be for something urgent or something beyond it, e.g. a first-time client who feels off, an unusual request, but for all the other messages where you pick up your phone and immediately realise it could have waited, e.g. "What are your rates?", "Will you be available on Friday next week?" The AI handles it easily across email, booking forms, WhatsApp and Telegram. It really is the secretary we all deserve with the tons of timewasters and noise that floods our DMs.

2) Does it work with Whatsapp personal or does it have to be Whatsapp business? I heard Whatsapp business usually bans sex workers. Is it risky even on personal in that Meta might take a closer look at who's using it's API and why and then ban me if they realise I'm a sex worker?

3) I see you are all about privacy and security and that's brilliant to see. “Swiss-hosted, Self-hosted AI, No data shared, no training on our content, No scanning, no profiling, no ads, Encrypted at rest. Zero data mining.” These words are music to my ears. My investigation into the privacy policies of escort directories did not inspire great confidence in the platforms we are entrusting with our identities and personal data. Not to mention the bigger platforms like social media apps etc. The super villainy of big tech (and small to medium sized tech villains running escort directories) must surely be on borrowed time before sex workers in particular and society in general en masse decides they've had enough of walking around with devices chock full of spyware monitoring our every move, word, action, thought, selling us out to spammers, leaving our identities lying around waiting for the next hacker or Fed raid to get hold of. Do you think Google, X, Meta etc are too big to fall if enough people decide they care about privacy and security and they can't, or won't, mend their wicked ways? What about Eros, Privatedelights, Adultwork etc? Do you think the day will come when sex workers will say no matter how big and popular a platform is, if the people running that platform are demonstrably too lazy, corrupt and incompetent to be entrusted with our identity documents and personal details, then we won't use those platforms any more. Enough so to cause those platform to either get their shit together or fall?

Sadly, sex workers would not be the end of big tech companies. The reason they can afford to ban us and hide us out of sight is because most people outside the industry are either vaguely supportive or apathetic to our plight. A more likely cause of their downfall would be data theft backlash, kids' mental health litigation or EU regulation with teeth, and when that day comes, for whatever reason, I will be breaking out my finest bottle of champagne.

With directories though, I would say their days are numbered. Their entire business model is us. If we leave, they die, and the reasons to leave keep piling up: the opaque ranking schemes where the price to be seen keeps going up, ratting providers out and we only find out after the fact, genuinely horrible support. The day most providers take back the one edge directories have over us, which is discoverability, is the day their relevance ends. With more and more providers getting their own websites, we're gradually inching closer to this.

On our part, I knew what I'd love to see from these platforms and never got it, so I built BlushDesk with that in mind. Things that would be unusual for most apps in this space, e.g. a warrant canary that lets you know if we get data requests from government agencies, and if we don't update it for more than a month you know we've been told to stay quiet (we update it monthly). There's also a page dedicated to explaining every single tech choice we made, from what AI system we use to what we use for emails to our encryption. Nothing hiding behind vague reassurances: Why you can trust Blushdesk. 

4) If you could get Blushdesk approved as an app on the Apple Store, or Google Play, would you want to? I'm assuming they'd immediately ban it as an app due to the connection with sex work. Cory Doctorow (an expert on tech and where big tech's worst inclinations meet with society's right to use tech in ways that suit us, not to have our digital rights trampled all over) has recently proposed that the reason it's illegal to jailbreak an iPhone, or Android phone and run whatever apps you want on it rather than just apps approved by Apple store or Google play, not just illegal in the USA but illegal everywhere in the world, is because USA has always threatened the rest of the world's governments with tariffs if they don't make it illegal in their own countries. And now that tariffs have happened anyway, there's no incentive to comply. So those laws will inevitably change. They have already started to change. I'm excited about the implications for sex workers. Do you think that could happen and if it did and people could run Blushdesk as an app, what would that look like?

Short answer: no. I wouldn't want it on the app store.
While BlushDesk could benefit massively from being an app, being on the app store means playing by Apple and Google's rules, plus it puts us out there. Right now it's an if-you-know-you-know situation and you can't accidentally find it, but with app stores that could happen, ruining the low profile we want.

If sideloading takes off though, which I expect in the next couple of years thanks to lots of countries shaking off the US's yoke, BlushDesk would be ready. Here's what it would look like: biometrics like Face ID to open, the app working offline so you can update your calendar in an underground parking garage.