We’re at a point in humanity’s collective history where we must stop questioning whether we’re living in an episode of Black Mirror or not. The Universe is clearly taking it as a challenge and amping up its effort to out-bizarre itself with increasingly baffling inventions.
While we were busy worrying about AI turning sentient and enslaving humanity, the AI in question was busy machine elarning regressive human customs like hosting beauty pageants and creating their version of the same.
Case in point, a beauty pageant for models and influencers who don’t exist in real life but have been artificially generated using computer programmes. Sigh.
The World AI Creator Awards (WAICA) will have artificial models and influencers (yes, they exist) competing against each other for a cash prize and, we assume, bragging rights amongst other computer-generated beings.
The pageant, which claims to be a “first-of-its-kind global programme of awards dedicated to recognising the achievements of AI creators around the world”, has partnered with Fanvue, a subscription-based social platform for AI-based creators. Because unrealistic beauty and societal standards cannot be escaped by any woman, real or artificially generated, the pageant will be judging the contestants based on three parameters: Beauty, tech, and social clout.
The models and influencers will have to be technically sound, popular on social media platforms like Instagram, beautiful (duh!), poised, and able to answer traditional pageant questions like “If you could have one dream to make the world a better place, what would it be?”, which would be fed to the AI model as a prompt.
The cherry on top of this bizarre sundae is the panel of judges. These AI generated beauties will bejudged by four ‘people’. There’s Sally-Ann Fawcett, a beauty pageant historian and author, Andrew Bloch, an entrepreneur and PR advisor, and two AI-generated influencers because who better to judge fellow AI generated models than two ‘women’ who exist because of prompts fed to a a computer programme.
While Fawcett insisted, in an interview with Forbes, that the pageant is expecting diverse beauty standards and is all about celebrating the technology, the AI-generated influencers that we’ve seen till now, including the two esteemed judges on the panel, subscribe to traditional beauty standards with their perfect skin and humanly-impossible proportions.
These artificial contestants (and their real creators) will compete for a cash prize of $5,000 and public relations support worth more than $5,000. They will also be promoted on the Fanvue platform whose co-founder Will Monanage hopes that this would go on to become the “Oscars of the AI creator economy”.
Now that you’re all caught up on the bizarre side of the Internet for the day, back to regular programming!
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